


love like fools

by Flowerparrish



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Plot? What Plot?, Slow Burn, bucky barnes pov, this is capital S Soft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2019-12-26 22:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18291473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish
Summary: On the other side is Barton, with a dog—since when is there a dog in the tower?—on a purple leash, who grins at him like they’re friends, when in reality they’ve spoken maybe sixty words to each other, total, and five sixths of those were probably Barton speaking at Bucky and garnering no response.“You should come for a walk with me and Lucky,” Barton tells him, still grinning at him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Releasing this into the world as a chapter fic because I've been keeping it close since January and I really want to share it. I have about three more chapters already written, and it... might... be winding down? Will probably update every couple of weeks, maybe more frequently as summer hits. 
> 
> Title from Lauren Aquilina's Fools, which represents 100% the soft pining vibe this fic is going for.

Bucky hasn’t left his rooms in the Tower for three days when there’s a knock at his door. He has enough food to last him another four days, so he ignores whoever it is and continues to lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think.

 

The knock sounds again.

 

He ignores it.

 

Then he hears it, a noise that sounds… like a high-pitched whine. After a moment, the knock sounds again, over the whining sound but not cutting it off.

 

It’s just grating enough that Bucky heaves himself off of his couch and slumps toward the door, throwing it open.

 

On the other side is Barton, with a dog—since when is there a dog in the tower?—on a purple leash, who grins at him like they’re friends, when in reality they’ve spoken maybe sixty words to each other, total, and five sixths of those were probably Barton speaking at Bucky and garnering no response.

 

“You should come for a walk with me and Lucky,” Barton tells him, still grinning at him. His smile is a little lopsided; it reminds Bucky of… something, he can’t quite pin it down.

 

He studies Barton and the excited dog. Barton has the dog on a short leash, but Lucky is straining against it to try to reach Bucky.

 

Bucky contemplates the dog for a moment, before deciding, hey, Barton brought the dog here, which he wouldn’t have done if he didn’t want Bucky to interact with it. (He doesn’t necessarily agree with Barton choosing to trust him with something as vulnerable as a dog, but today isn’t a bad day, per se. Just a day.)

 

He kneels down and Barton loosens the leash by a few inches, allowing Lucky to _almost_ reach Bucky’s knees and pounce. Bucky reaches out a cautious hand—flesh, not metal—and Lucky headbutts him excitedly. “Good boy,” Bucky tells him softly, and Lucky nudges against him even more emphatically than before.

 

Bucky realizes, after a moment, that he’s… smiling, kind of. It’s a foreign feeling.

 

He gives Lucky one last pat before standing once more to consider Barton. “Why?” he asks.

 

Barton looks confused. “Why what?”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Why should I go for a walk with you and Lucky?”

 

Barton gestures at Bucky’s apartment with his free hand. “You’ve been holed up in here for days, ever since Cap and Nat left on that mission. You should get some fresh air.”

 

Bucky considers that. “So Steve sent you,” he decides.

 

Clint rolls his eyes. “Sure, whatever. You coming?”

 

Bucky considers the pair for a moment before nodding. Fresh air does sound nice—he can’t remember the last time he left the tower, if he’s honest—and he definitely doesn’t feel safe going out alone. Without Steve here to act as a buffer between Bucky and the rest of the world, Barton is an acceptable substitute. Plus, dog.

 

He throws on a coat in deference to the chill that’s still in the air in the early spring, which gives him the perfect excuse to also wear gloves that hide his metal hand.

 

Barton waits in the hall while Bucky grabs his things, doubling back to stuff his wallet into his pocket just in case, and then they’re headed toward the elevators and the outside world.

 

“Since when have you had a dog?” Bucky finally asks.

 

Clint scratches the back of his neck with the hand not holding the leash. “Uh, I’ve had him for a while? It’s a long story. But I share him with Kate, kind of, so he’s been staying with her since… well, for a bit.”

 

Kate, Clint’s protégé, if she can even be called that when Clint swears she’s on his level already. Bucky’s seen footage of Clint on missions and on the range, and if Clint thinks she’s that good, Bucky’s a little bit afraid of her. He’s also never met her, probably because he spends as little time in the communal areas of the tower as possible and the time he does spend there has never overlapped with Kate’s visits. He wonders, idly, if she was around more before when she wasn’t responsible for Lucky… and for keeping Lucky safe from Bucky.

 

“You wanted him out of the way in case I went Winter Soldier on everyone, huh?” he asks, and he’s proud of himself that it doesn’t come out bitter. He doesn’t really feel bitter about it—the dog can’t defend itself, after all, and it’s Clint’s responsibility as his caretaker to keep him safe from things like the Winter Soldier—but half the time when Bucky talks his words come out bitter whether he means for them to or not. It’s another one of the things that makes communicating with other people so difficult.

 

“Well, when you put it like that,” Clint says, but he doesn’t deny it. Bucky appreciates the honesty.

 

“So, what made you decide to bring him back to the Tower?”

 

Clint glances at Bucky for a second, probably ascertaining his mental state, but Bucky feels shockingly steady, especially considering the fact that they’re headed out the main doors of the Tower as he speaks. “If I’d known he’d make you chatty, I’d’ve brought him back ages ago,” he says.

 

Bucky only raises an eyebrow, both in response and because Clint didn’t actually answer his question.

 

Clint runs a hand through his hair again. “It just felt like time. You don’t seem, like, dangerous, just sort of fucked up and hermit-like.”

 

That startles a laugh out of Bucky. “What the fuck?”

 

Clint grins at him, or at least, Bucky thinks he does. Clint definitely grins, although he’s not necessarily looking at Bucky, too focused on Lucky’s movements and behaviors. Maybe he’s grinning at Lucky and it just happens to be right after Bucky spoke—that makes more sense. No one smiles at Bucky, unless it’s a sad half-smile of pity, which is nothing like the bright and honest grin gracing Clint’s face.

 

“We’ve all been there,” he’s saying, waving a hand around as if to support his point. “I mean, I have, at least. And Lucky helped me, so I thought, hey, maybe he could help you too.”

 

It’s the sincerest overture of… what, friendship? That Bucky’s ever had, except maybe—probably—when he and Steve became friends, but he doesn’t really remember that. He’d like to remember that, and he thinks, _I’d like to remember this, too._

 

“Oh,” he says after a moment. “Okay.”

 

Clint hums and then they’re just both walking, breathing in the crisp air that isn’t necessarily clean, being city air full of exhaust and smells, but is at least different from the circulated air in the Tower.

 

When they near the park, Lucky begins straining against his leash, trying to encourage them to walk faster and ignoring all the places he would have sniffed and peed on before. Clint laughs at him and speeds up just a bit, and Bucky smiles a small smile at the antics as well.

 

Did he use to be a dog person? He can’t remember if he ever had a particular fondness for them or just liked them in passing. He thinks he might be a dog person now; there’s something about their unending enthusiasm and optimism that makes him hopeful in spite of everything. It’s a bit like how he feels about Steve: the awe that something so good can exist in this awful world.

 

“Thanks,” he says when they’re about to cross the street and enter the park.

 

Clint shrugs. “You’re welcome,” he says. “Want to hold the leash?”

 

That seems like a lot of responsibility and also means people might try to _talk_ to him, asking about the dog, and that’s… suboptimal at best. “Nah,” he says. “I’m good.”

 

They wander around the park pretty aimlessly, Clint allowing Lucky to lead wherever he feels like sniffing and Bucky content to follow after them. As he predicted, a few people come up to ask about Lucky and, if they recognize him, shake hands with Clint. Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets and glowers at anyone who tries to talk to him, and they pretty much all leave him alone after that.

 

They wander for about half an hour before stopping by a cart selling hot chocolate and coffee. Coffee does very little for Bucky with his metabolism, so he opts for the hot chocolate, much to Clint’s dismay.

 

“Coffee is _life,”_ Clint tells him seriously. He buys himself two cups, downs one immediately, and tosses the empty cup away in a trash can.

 

“How do you not burn yourself?” Bucky can’t help but ask, a bit impressed and a bit horrified.

 

Clint shrugs. “Practice?”

 

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” Bucky says slowly, but he goes back to his hot chocolate.

 

Hot chocolate is one thing he loves about the modern world. Sure, it existed when he was a kid, but he feels confident in his lack of memory of it, because it’s not like anyone he knew would have had money to spare for it while he was growing up. And he sure never had any as the Winter Soldier. It’s something good about this new life he’s carving out for himself, something warm and rich that reminds him that good things exist, like Lucky, like Steve.

 

He doesn’t think about much while they walk back to the Tower, not talking, but not uncomfortable in the silence as they watch Lucky and sip their respective drinks. He checks his watch as they head back inside and realizes he’s been out for over an hour and barely felt overwhelmed in that time. And when he was overwhelmed, it was easy to focus on Lucky and Clint and pull back from that feeling.

 

It might be the best morning he’s had in, fuck, who knows how long.

 

Clint, like the true friend he has potential to be, doesn’t try to make Bucky say any of this. He just waves as the elevator stops on Bucky and Steve’s floor and says, “We’ll come find you next time we head out for a walk, see if you’re up for joining us.”

 

Bucky nods. “Okay,” he agrees. He feels like he should say more, but that’s all he has for now. Clint’s answering grin says that maybe it’s enough.

 

He spends the rest of the day laying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think. It’s easier now that he feels sort of peaceful inside. _Maybe,_ he thinks, _just maybe, I can make this work._

 

***

 

Walks with Clint and Lucky become a regular occurrence. Clint stops by every day in the morning, although not always at the same time. Sometimes he wakes Bucky up at seven am, and more often he slumps against Bucky’s doorframe around eleven looking half a second from falling asleep, the only tension in his body in his tight grip on Lucky’s leash. Lucky is boundlessly energetic, and the consistency of the dog makes up for the inconsistency of his human.

 

Bucky likes consistency. He likes to know exactly how long things are going to take, and at exactly what times he’s going to be required to do things, and because he never knows what words to say, he likes the consistency of meaningless and polite exchanges where the words are pre-scripted for his convenience.

 

Clint Barton, Bucky is learning—he really should have anticipated, honestly—is not a consistent person. But there is a consistency in the way he appears at Bucky’s door every day; there’s a consistency in the way he doesn’t pressure Bucky to talk the way Steve does, just chatters about harmless and seemingly random topics or walks with him in companionable silence; there’s a consistency in the way Clint just says, “Okay,” on the rare occasions Bucky doesn’t feel capable of venturing out into the world for one of their walks, one word that doesn’t express even a hint of disappointment or annoyance, and makes Bucky think that maybe it actually is okay to say no sometimes.

 

(He doesn’t have much practice with saying no, but he thinks maybe Clint, like Steve, is a safe person to practice his agency with. It’s too huge for him to think about for very long, so he doesn’t, but he tucks the idea away in a safe corner of his mind and ignores the warmth it emanates.)

 

There’s a consistency to Clint’s unwavering kindness, so Bucky thinks he can forgive the fact that Clint is an inconsistent disaster of a human being in general.

 

***

 

Steve finally comes back from his mission. The team has a dinner to celebrate that they’re all back in the tower at the same time, and Bucky decides to go for a change. He still sits in a corner and doesn’t contribute much to any of the conversations happening around them, but he gets to enjoy watching Natasha enter a drinking contest with Thor and Steve. No one wins, because they’re all either alien, enhanced, or scary.

 

Clint joins in for the first quarter of the contest and doesn’t stop until he’s falling out of his chair, at which point Natasha cuts him off. He laughs and stumbles up off the ground and then heads over to Bucky, taking the empty seat next to him.

 

“Hey,” Clint says, and then he just sort of tips slowly sideways until he’s leaning against Bucky. Bucky’s first impulse is to shove him off, but it passes quickly and he notices that he actually doesn’t mind the warmth or the weight of Clint.

 

That’s when, of course, Clint’s brain catches up with his body and he shoves himself away. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, and then he reaches out to pat Bucky’s arm before pulling himself away at the last second.

 

“You’re a handsy drunk,” Bucky observes, quietly amused.

 

“I’m definitely drunk,” Clint agrees. “I’m gonna go pet Lucky. At least he’ll appreciate it.”

 

Bucky can’t help but smile a bit. “You do that,” he agrees. “See you tomorrow.”

 

“Night, terminator,” Clint tells him.

 

Bucky groans. “Not you too,” he says, because the nicknames from Tony were already too much, he doesn’t need Clint joining in.

 

“Too late, we’re friends now,” Clint tells him before stumbling off to the elevator.

 

“What was that about?” Tony asks. Bucky expects Steve to save him, but apparently he’s too distracted with Thor and Nat to notice that people are talking to Bucky.

 

Bucky just shrugs. Tony looks annoyed at the lack of response, but he directs his attention back to the others and leaves Bucky to escape while no one’s looking.

 

***

 

Bucky hadn’t realized no one knew about his new friendship with Clint, but he doesn’t really care if they know or don’t know. It’s not a secret, but it’s also nothing he feels is imperative to share.

 

That said, he _thought_ that Steve knew. So when Steve answers the door in their quarters while Bucky’s getting out of the shower and toweling dry and tries to tell Clint that Bucky probably won’t be interested in joining he and Lucky on their walk, Bucky’s momentarily stumped.

 

“I’ll wait and ask him anyway,” he hears Clint say, and that kicks him back into gear. He dresses quickly and heads out into the lounge where Clint is leaning against the wall near the door, Lucky on a short leash, and Steve is looking confused as to why Clint’s still there.

 

“Hey,” Bucky says. “Let me grab my coat.”

 

“What?” Steve asks. He looks gobsmacked. Bucky could laugh at the genuine surprise on his face.

 

“I’ll be back in like an hour,” Bucky tells him, instead of answering or allowing his amusement to show. He waves over his shoulder as he follows Clint out the door, and they make it to the elevator before the laughter begins.

 

“That was great!” Clint enthuses once they catch their breath. “His face!”

 

“Why is it so shocking that I have friends?” Bucky asks, mostly rhetorically.

 

Clint casts him a look that clearly says, _you know why,_ which is fair.

 

“I thought Steve was the reason you asked me on these walks in the first place,” Bucky says after a moment.

 

Clint snorts. “I just let you believe that because you were being difficult about trusting that I didn’t have ulterior motives.”

 

Bucky wants to argue that point, but he remembers being confused as to why anyone would go out of their way to spend time with him when Clint first asked, remembers Steve asking them to being the only explanation he could think of.

 

But the thing is, he kind of _still_ doesn’t understand what would have prompted Clint to invite him out if it wasn’t at Steve’s behest, so he asks, “Why did you ask in the first place, then?”

 

Clint shrugs and pulls a face that’s almost a wince. “I dunno?”

 

Bucky side-eyes him. He’s not trying to “murder glare,” or whatever, but he thinks he might have done so anyway because Clint huffs.

 

Clint’s attention is clearly not on Lucky, who is tugging every which way at the leash now that they’re outside, so Bucky snags it out of Clint’s hand. He doesn’t even resist, which either says something about how distracted he is or something about him trusting Bucky. The second option is too much to contemplate, so Bucky settles on believing the first.

 

Now that his hands are free, Clint stuffs them deep into his pockets. He’s all hunched over and uncomfortable looking, and Bucky can’t quite resist bumping their shoulders gently.

 

Clint glances at him, sighs, and speaks. “I just remembered what it felt like to keep myself holed up away from everyone, because I thought they’d be safer that way. I thought, you know, Lucky helped me learn to trust myself and venture out into the world again, and maybe it would work for you too, you know? Because you hole up every time Steve’s gone, and it’s not healthy.” He winces. “Not that I wanted to pressure you into something that you weren’t ready for—” He cuts himself off and makes a frustrated noise.

 

“Breathe,” Bucky advises.

 

Clint does, for a couple of moments, and when he speaks again he doesn’t sound quite as frantic. “I just wanted to give you options,” he said. “And sometimes the first step toward learning to trust yourself is to know someone else trusts you.”

 

Bucky doesn’t know what to do with that. He’s known Clint trusts him for weeks now, but it’s still so impossible even though it’s clearly true. “How?” is what he ends up asking, instead of saying, “You shouldn’t.”

 

Clint shrugs. His brow is furrowed and he looks deeply uncomfortable. “It just felt like I eventually either needed to choose to trust you or not to, and I chose to give you the same chance everyone else gave me.”

 

Bucky mulls that over. “You’re dumb,” he says eventually, and Clint nods like, yeah, fair. “But thank you.” Trust is a gift Bucky doesn’t think he deserves, but he’s not stupid enough to refuse it.

 

It’s about that time that someone comes over to ask about Lucky—his name, how old he is, can they pet him?—and their questions are directed at Bucky, because, oh yeah, he’s holding the leash. He glances over at Clint, but Clint’s still lost in his own head, so, haltingly, Bucky answers.

 

It isn’t the end of the world. It’s still a stilted and awkward conversation, but the girl clearly cares way more about interacting with Lucky than interacting with him, and it’s… fine.

 

When she leaves, Clint offers to take the leash back.

 

“Nah, I’ve got it,” Bucky says, realizing he does. This isn’t nearly as awful as he imagined.

 

Clint doesn’t say anything, just smiles and nods. They pass the rest of the walk in silence, but it doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Bucky has a lot to digest, but for now he gets to focus on Lucky and all the spots he wants to sniff and friends he wants to make, and, for now, everything is okay.

 

***

 

Bucky forgets that he’s going to have to deal with Steve until they’re almost back at his floor.

 

“Wait,” he blurts, actually anxious for the first time in an hour. “What do I tell Steve?”

 

Clint shrugs. “Whatever you want?” he offers. Bucky shoots him a glare for being unhelpful. “Seriously,” Clint says, holding his hands up. He drops the leash in doing so, but they’re in the elevator, so it’s fine. He stoops to pick it up before saying, “He’s your best friend, so you can tell him everything, but also, you don’t owe him anything, so. Tell him as much or as little as you want.”

 

Bucky thinks this is what his mandated therapist has been trying to drill into his head about choice and self-direction and a bunch of other bullshit that might not actually be bullshit. If she just said things the way Clint does maybe he’d actually get it.

 

“Oh.” He thinks about it. Nods. “Thanks.”

 

Clint just waves him off as the elevator lets him out on his and Steve’s floor.

 

Steve isn’t waiting right inside the apartment when Bucky lets himself in, but rather than releasing the tension that’s building up inside of him, it just amplifies it. “Steve?” he calls out.

 

He hears Steve’s reply of “here!” come from the direction of the kitchen, where he finds Steve kneading bread. He thinks it’s thrifty to make his own bread—as if he actually needs to save money—but Bucky mostly leaves him alone about it because the bread he makes is seriously delicious. It’s pretty much the only thing Steve can make successfully, and Bucky attributes that to his Easy Foolproof Recipe rather than any actual skill.

 

“How was your walk?”

 

The question is too easy; it feels like a trap. Bucky answers anyway. “Fine.”

 

“Since when do you go for walks with Clint and Lucky?”

 

There it is. Bucky shrugs, but Steve can’t see him, so he sighs and says, “Since a couple weeks ago. You were away.”

 

“You usually hole up when I’m away,” Steve points out, although it almost sounds like a question.

 

“I did,” Bucky answers, “at least, at first.”

 

“What changed?” Steve asks.

 

Bucky’s pretty sure he’s been kneading that bread for too long. He’s also not going to point that out, even if the consequence is ruined bread, because he thinks he might just about be able to get through this conversation, but not if he has to look Steve in the eye while doing it.

 

“Clint stopped by and invited me on a walk. I went.”

 

“Why?”

 

Bucky suppresses a frustrated growl. It doesn’t help that even he doesn’t fully understand why he agreed to go out. He’d just been holed up for days, and he had nothing better to do, and Clint had shown up with a dog and he’d kind of just thought, fuck it, might as well. “I like dogs,” he settles on, because it’s true and also because it’s easy.

 

Steve nods. “You always did,” he says casually. He doesn’t say anything else, so Bucky takes that as permission to escape.

 

“You’re over-kneading the bread,” he calls over his shoulder as he walks away, and almost laughs at the sound of Steve cursing in response.

 

***

 

Bucky thinks that will be the end of it, at least for a while. So he’s surprised when Steve greets him the next morning with coffee and a sleek new Starkphone. Bucky accepts the coffee, but stares blankly at Steve when he tries to also pass over the phone.

 

“What is this?”

 

Steve pointedly wiggles the phone in his direction, as if to try to entice him into taking it. Nice try, but he’s not a cat. Bucky decides to ignore him until he’s willing to share and settles in at the kitchen island, directing his attention to the coffee instead.

 

After a few minutes of being ignored, Steve huffs and says, “If you’re going out, you should have a phone.”

 

“Clint has a phone,” Bucky says dismissively.

 

“What if you get separated?”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes. Then he thinks, _oh no_ , because Clint’s expressiveness is clearly rubbing off on him. “I have plenty of skills to keep myself safe long enough to get back to the tower.”

 

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. “Just take the phone.” Bucky eyes it. “Please?”

 

Bucky doesn’t really care about the phone one way or the other, so he relents and takes it. He’s still not good at denying Steve anything. “I’ll try not to rack up any exorbitant phone bills.”

 

Steve shrugs, some of the tension in his shoulders easing. “Call whomever you like, it’s all on Tony’s dime. It’s not like he’ll notice.”

 

So thrifty he makes his own bread, and yet he encourages Bucky to make as many international phone calls as he likes. Steve certainly is a contradiction.

 

***

 

Steve disappears after breakfast, leaving their apartment to go elsewhere in the tower, but that isn’t unusual, so Bucky doesn’t bother thinking about it. After about an hour, Steve returns and joins Bucky on the couch. Bucky has been reading since Steve left, and he reads for a couple hours more until Clint knocks at the door. He stands and pulls on his coat before he goes to meet Clint. “See you later,” he says to Steve as he opens the door.

 

Clint’s eyeing him in a weird way with an expression Bucky actually can’t read. It’s not dangerous or bad, though, as far as he can tell, so he steals Lucky’s leash and heads off to the elevator. Clint calls out to Steve before following Bucky.

 

The second the elevator doors close on them, Clint’s laughing. “I can’t believe Cap gave me the shovel talk and we aren’t even dating,” he gasps out between breaths.

 

“He what?”

 

Clint’s laughter increases. It’s the only response Bucky gets.

 

He’s becoming increasingly glad that he’s the one holding Lucky’s leash, because Clint absolutely would have let go of it by now, and the elevator doors are sliding open. Clint’s pretty much touching the floor he’s so hunched over at this point, and people are absolutely going to be looking at them, and even Lucky seems concerned.

 

Bucky realizes, abruptly, that he and Clint are _friends,_ because instead of being exasperated or annoyed, he’s just feeling this weird warm fondness for Clint Barton, Human Disaster.

 

Not enough fondness to hang around and watch him trying to compose himself for long, though. Bucky sets off and leaves Clint to get his act together or be abandoned.

 

Bucky makes it five steps out the lobby door before Clint catches up with them, out of breath. Bucky hopes that’s more from the laughing fit than from the quick sprint—the man _is_ a superhero, after all.

 

Clint steals the leash back from Bucky, who could fight to keep it but lets it happen. Lucky prances along, stopping every few feet to sniff and decide if any given spot is worthy of his pee, and Bucky shoves his hands into his pockets.

 

“We’re friends,” he says after a couple of minutes, when Clint’s breathing has evened out once more.

 

Clint glances over at him. “Uh, yeah,” he says, like it’s obvious. “Why?”

 

Bucky shrugs. He’s still sorting through the realization that his number of friends has doubled—tripled, if you count Lucky—in the last however many days, after months of his life being just Steve. Maybe that’s why Steve’s concerned.

 

“Steve really gave you the shovel talk?”

 

Clint looks like he’s going to collapse into hysteria again, but he somehow holds on to himself. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Like everything short of asking me what my intentions are.”

 

What a thought—as if Clint would have any intentions toward Bucky at all, much less _romantic_ ones. “Does he think—?” Bucky starts to ask.

 

“Nah, I don’t think so,” Clint assures him. “I think he’s just… protective.”

 

Bucky snorts. “He’s definitely that,” he agrees. “Sorry about the shovel talk, I guess.”

 

Clint shrugs. “Nah, no worries. It’s hilarious but also kinda cool.”

 

“You’re weird,” Bucky decides.

 

“You like it.”

 

And, Bucky’s coming to realize, he really does.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky discovers how to use a phone like a cool person, and also: Star Trek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Un-beta'd but I did a read through for errors. Feel free to let me know if I missed anything!

Bucky realizes a few hours later, back in the tower and holed up in his room, that he’d forgotten to tell Clint about the phone. He’d forgotten about its presence in his pocket entirely.

 

“Jarvis?” he asks, hesitant because Steve tries to live without many of the automated features of the tower that the other residents enjoy, which includes Jarvis’ constant surveillance of their apartment. But he’s pretty sure Jarvis is definitely in the Starkphone.

 

“Yes, Sargent Barnes?” comes the response from his phone’s speakers. He likes that the AI isn’t trying to hide its presence.

 

“Could you add Clint’s number to my contacts?”

 

“I have done so,” Jarvis replies after a fraction of a moment.

 

“Thanks,” Bucky says, even though he’s not sure if you’re supposed to thank an AI. It never hurts to be polite.

 

He pulls up Clint’s contact and opens up a new text message to him.

 

_Steve gave me a phone and I don’t know what to do with it,_ he sends.

 

He waits with a disproportionate amount of anxiety for a response, which comes 34 seconds later.

 

_watch cat videos on youtube_

It’s not as helpful as Bucky had hoped. _I can do that on the tv,_ he points out.

 

_Yeah and now u can do it from ur phone whenever u want,_ he receives in under half a minute.

 

_I don’t think that’s why Steve got it for me_

_Steve is boring w/e_

That startles a laugh out of Bucky. _what else do not boring people do with phones?_ he sends.

He has to wait almost two minutes for a response. The anxiety makes a comeback when around ninety seconds have passed.

 

_Text ppl- good going- youtube, listen to music, read the news, look at memes and annoy ur friends with them, overuse emojis, etc_

Bucky knows what memes are, but he’s never really understood the appeal. He says as much, and receives, _I WILL TEACH U TO LOVE MEMES,_ which instills what Bucky considers to be the appropriate amount of trepidation within him.

 

_I’m good_

Clint’s response isn’t words. It’s a star eyes emoji, a stars emoji, and a fireworks emoji. Bucky doesn’t really know how to interpret that, except to feel that maybe he won’t enjoy where this is going.

 

He’s wrong and he’s right.

 

Clint spends the rest of the day intermittently spamming him with memes. Bucky gives up on responding after the first few when Clint appears undeterred no matter what he says. The truth is, Bucky doesn’t hate all of them. Some are even funny. He’s partial to evil Kermit and the angry looking cat one. But it’s not really what he expected when he started texting Clint.

 

Of course, why he ever expected Clint to have a predictable and normal response is beyond him. Clearly, this is at least fifty percent his own fault.

 

“Who’re you texting, Buck?” Steve asks when Bucky’s phone chimes for approximately the seventieth time that night. They’re watching The Walking Dead, because Bucky likes to critique their zombie killing methods. Steve was worried it would be triggering or something, but Bucky had pointed out that it’s all so fake it couldn’t possibly get to him. (He’d had more nightmares than usual for the first week after they started watching it, but by that point he was invested in the story and didn’t want to give it up. Exposure therapy is a thing he’s heard of, or something. The nightmares faded back to normal eventually, anyway.)

 

“Clint keeps texting me memes,” Bucky replies.

 

Steve laughs. “That’s all he ever texts. He replies to important messages with memes, emojis, or gifs. I’ve never seen him text actual words.”

 

Bucky thinks back to the conversation they’d had that had led to the memes. Huh. He feels a rush of warmth for Clint, but that’s dumb, so he ignores it.

 

In response to Steve, he shrugs. “Some of them are funny.”

 

Steve looks dubious. “If you say so. I don’t understand the appeal.”

 

Bucky thinks he might. He’s been thinking about it, because he’s been so inundated with memes today that he has to try to understand why people like them so much. He thinks it’s because it’s like having an inside joke that the rest of the world is in on. It makes you a part of something.

 

It would maybe be nice to be a part of something, even if that something is just a particularly stupid joke.

 

His phone chimes as another meme comes through. This one is about stealing dogs. It’s very Clint.

 

_U,_ he responds.

 

_me,_ Clint agrees. Then, _also u tho,_ comes through.

 

Bucky considers that. He doesn’t have any impulse to steal the dogs that he sees, just maybe to pet them (if doing so didn’t involve talking to the owners first, to ask permission). But also his love of dogs was enough to coax him out of the apartment without Steve for the first time, so maybe.

 

“You and Clint seem close,” Steve says. Bucky, still thinking about dogs and whether he wants one—maybe?—doesn’t register that Steve has spoken for a second.

 

“Oh,” he says. He doesn’t spend enough time around people that aren’t Steve to know what closeness entails. “We’re friends,” he offers.

 

“Is that all?”

 

Bucky is confused. Friends is _a lot._ Friends is a _big deal._ “What else would we be?” he asks, before he remembers his own question from earlier that day, about whether or not Steve thought he and Clint were romantically involved. Apparently Clint was wrong. “Oh, no, yeah, we’re friends,” he rushes to explain. “I’m not—” he says, and then he stops.

 

He’s not what? He’s not sure what his sexuality is; he knows that the Bucky Barnes of the 1940s liked women, and he knows the Winter Soldier didn’t like anyone, but he doesn’t know about any preferences of proclivities he might or might not have now.

 

He doesn’t really care, either. It’ll become relevant or it won’t, but it sure isn’t relevant now, when he can barely hold a conversation unless it’s with one of two people (and not even then, some days).

 

“I’m barely ready to have new friends,” he decides to say.

 

Steve looks contrite. “Of course, Buck,” he agrees. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

 

Bucky snorts. “You did, you punk,” he disagrees. “You’re the nosiest person I’ve ever met.”

 

Steve blushes but doesn’t try to deny it. “Yeah, well.”

 

They go back to watching The Walking Dead, and Bucky goes back to intermittently looking at and sometimes responding to Clint’s memes.

 

It’s a nice night.

 

***

 

After their next walk, Clint tells Bucky he should come hang out on Clint’s floor with he and Lucky. “We can make your phone cool,” Clint says.

 

Bucky does not know why his phone needs to be “cool,” as it is a tool designed for functionality, but he doesn’t say that. Instead, he considers it.

 

On one hand, he’s never been to Clint’s floor. It is a new environment, and Bucky does not like new environments.

 

On the other hand, his first walk with Clint and Lucky was a risk, and he’d survived that. He’d even learned to enjoy their walks. Maybe exposure to new things is necessary for eventual happiness. Maybe branching out is not necessarily terrible.

 

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees. “I’ll text Steve.”

 

He pulls up Steve’s contact and sends him, _hanging out with Clint, back later,_ and after a few seconds he receives a thumbs up emoji in reply. Steve clearly has no room to talk about other people overusing emojis.

 

“You know you could just ask JARVIS to text him, right?”

 

Bucky shrugs. He hadn’t known, but he also thinks Steve will appreciate hearing it from him more.

 

Getting off of the elevator on Clint’s higher floor, much closer to the communal floors than his and Steve’s floor, is strange. The first big difference that Bucky notes is that Clint’s door is painted purple.

 

He raises an eyebrow at Clint.

 

Clint just shrugs. “It’s my home, isn’t it? I like purple.”

 

Bucky will concede that it is a nice shade of purple. “Point made.”

 

Clint shoves open the door to his apartment—does he not lock it?—and gestures for Bucky to follow him in. After a moment of hesitation, he does, carefully pulling the door closed behind him.

 

Clint’s apartment is a disaster zone. There are about fifteen coffee cups scattered around on various surfaces, and Bucky can see from where he’s standing by the door that at least two of them are growing mold. There’s discarded shirts and hoodies across the floor, and arrows or half-constructed arrows everywhere. Then there’s Lucky’s things—beds, one in the kitchen and one in the living area, as well as toys all over. There are empty pizza boxes stacked up by the door, and beer bottles and soda cans are overflowing in the recycling bin.

 

It’s a lot to take in, all at once, and once Bucky does take it all in, he wonders why he’d expected anything different.

 

For all the mess, it looks cozy enough. The couch is leather and worn and looks soft; it is clearly superior to the one in his and Steve’s apartment, which he’s been assured by Steve, who was in turn assured by Stark, is “chic.”

 

Bucky finally glances over at Clint, who has freed Lucky from the leash and is staring around his own apartment. “Sorry, it’s kind of…” he starts to say before trailing off.

 

Bucky shrugs. “I like your couch.”

 

Clint brightens. “Way better than Stark’s stuff, right? I thought Tony was going to cry when I bought a bunch of stuff from thrift stores around the city. He wanted to set me up with a bunch of ergonomic stuff and I told him to shove it.”

 

Bucky doesn’t know what ergonomic means, but Clint says it disdainfully, and if Bucky and Steve’s furniture is anything to go by, ergonomic is not a desirable quality.

 

“Anyway, coffee?” Clint asks, as Bucky continues looking around, taking in the scuff marks on the coffee tables and the way one of the chairs at the small dining room table has a book propped under one of its legs.

 

“We just had coffee,” Bucky points out. They usually stop on their walks for coffee, or hot chocolate or tea or whatever Bucky is in the mood for that day. He likes exercising the ability to choose in this one small way, in an otherwise familiar routine. Clint always gets coffee, but then, Bucky thinks, there’s probably something to say for choosing what you know you like, too.

 

Still, there’s choosing coffee daily and there’s choosing to have it twice in less than an hour.

 

“Yeah,” Clint agrees, clearly not understanding the problem. He’s already moving around in the kitchen, pulling out the ground up beans and the filter paper, pouring water into the pot and then into a machine that looks gross, old, and undeniably well-used.

 

“You picked your own coffee machine too, I see,” Bucky comments.

 

Clint shrugs, half his focus on the clearly important task of making coffee. “Stark’s coffee tastes too fancy, you know?”

 

Bucky doesn’t necessarily know, but he thinks that’s the kind of statement Steve might agree with. It’s probably something he would have known, if he had all the right memories in his head.

 

Of course, if he had all the right memories, he’d have plenty that he didn’t want to go along with the good, so maybe it’s better this way.

 

“Well, you’ll have to show me what coffee should taste like, then,” Bucky says. “Steve does his hipster French press thing, and that never tastes right to me. Stark’s is okay.”

 

Clint, finished with the preparations, turns to look at Bucky while the machine clicks and hisses its way through warming up. “Wait, what do you do for coffee when Steve’s gone and you’re avoiding the communal floors of the tower?”

 

“I don’t drink coffee,” Bucky says, and it comes out almost a question. “I only really drink it when other people make it, anyway.”

 

Clint looks horrified. “How are we even friends?”

 

Bucky could be offended, but the teasing feels almost familiar—probably reminiscent of the way Steve used to tease him, and would do now if he could calm down his protective instincts for ten seconds. “That’s your own fault, pal,” he reminds Clint. “I was doing fine avoiding everyone but Steve. You’re the one that dragged me back out into the world.”

 

Clint crosses his arms. “That was before I knew you had the wrong opinions about coffee.” He considers. “Well, okay, the right opinion about French presses, and the wrong opinion about everything else.”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I take it you’re going to make it your life’s mission to make me appreciate caffeinated beverages the way you do?”

 

“Just coffee. Tea’s up to you.”

 

It’s ridiculous how serious Clint looks about this. It makes Bucky laugh softly, surprising himself and, it seems, by the slight widening of his eyes, surprising Clint as well.

 

The machine beeps before either of them needs to find words to break the moment growing between them, for which Bucky is one part grateful and one part disappointed. Why he would be disappointed by not having to fill a heavy silence Bucky doesn’t know, so he dismisses the feeling and turns to poking through Clint’s cupboards to try to find mugs.

 

Clint’s cupboards are a mess. There’s flour in with the soup and cereal, and sugar and cake mix in with the plates, and dishes are mixed with spices. “Your kitchen makes no sense,” Bucky complains.

 

Clint opens the cupboard above the coffeepot and Bucky sees a whole three rows of mugs precariously shoved in there, looking for all the world as if the closest ones could fall out and shatter at any moment. They are, at least, placed conveniently for streamlining the process of acquiring coffee—of course that would be the one exception to Clint’s general state of disorder.

 

Except, that gives Bucky a horrifying thought. “You’ve drunk your coffee straight out of the pot, haven’t you.” It’s not quite a question, more a horrified realization.

 

“I will neither confirm nor deny,” Clint responds, which is confirmation enough.

 

“You’re a trainwreck.”

 

“You’re just realizing this now?” Clint stops short of topping off the second mug of coffee. “Sugar? Milk?”

 

Bucky shrugs. “However.”

 

Clint huffs and rolls his eyes. “The point is to make it so that you _like_ it.”

 

“I don’t mind it any way.”

 

Clint seems dubious, but he tops off the mug and passes it to Bucky anyway. Bucky holds it in his metal hand, because it’s still too hot for his human hand. That doesn’t seem to deter Clint, who begins immediately downing mouthfuls from his own mug. 

 

“How do you not burn your mouth?”

 

Clint shrugs. “The skin cells grew back tougher?”

 

Bucky’s pretty sure that’s not how it works. But clearly Clint has something going for him.

 

“Well, let’s get down to business,” Clint declares, finishing his mug and pouring himself another. Bucky goes to make a comment, but Clint shoots him a glare, so he leaves Clint to his (unhealthy and slightly worrying) devices.

 

Clint’s humming a song to himself as he heads over to the couch, where Lucky has settled down for a nap. Clint sits on the opposite end from Lucky and looks over at Bucky, who is still hovering in the kitchen doorway expectantly.

 

Bucky doesn’t want to bother Lucky, curled up against the arm of the couch, so he sits in the middle. His thigh is pressed against Clint’s, warm and firm. It’s unsettling because he’s not used to being close to people, but it’s Clint, who he trusts, so he pushes away his discomfort. Underneath the surface feeling of unnaturalness, the closeness is almost…nice.

 

“So, show me your phone,” Clint commands, sounding eager. Bucky notices that in the thirty seconds it has taken them to relocate from the kitchen, Clint has finished half of his second cup of coffee.

 

Bucky pulls out his phone, something black and shiny with Stark’s name in silver across the back and some letters and numbers that mean nothing to Bucky at all.

 

Clint whistles. “Wow, the newest Starkphone? The one that’s not even on the market for another six months?”

 

Bucky stares down at the phone with apprehension. “Why would Stark give me that?”

 

Clint shrugs. “He’s probably testing the user-friendliness. Also the sturdiness. Figures if you can work it and keep it in one piece, it’s probably the kind of phone he can market to everyone and their grandparents.”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I know how to work a phone.”

 

Clint pokes at the screen, which lights up. Its background is a color Bucky can only think of as computer-screen blue with overlaid geometric shapes. “Okay, yeah, in the most boring way possible apparently.”

 

“I could hack the Pentagon with just this phone,” Bucky protests. “That’s not _boring.”_

 

“You and Natasha are so alike sometimes,” Clint mutters under his breath. Bucky isn’t sure if that was directed at him or if Clint just said it for his own benefit, and after a second Clint continues at his normal volume, “Okay, but do you know how to change your background picture? Home screen? Can you work social media?”

 

“I… know YouTube,” Bucky tries.

 

Clint shakes his head. “Nope. YouTube is… well, it’s _kind of_ social media, but not really.”

 

“Am I allowed to have social media?”

 

Clint pauses. Takes a moment. “Probably not,” he allows. “But fuck it, let’s do it anyway. No one’s told you specifically that you _can’t,_ right?”

 

That’s a point. Maybe not the best point, or the smartest choice, but Clint’s MO is dumb choices, and Bucky appears to be making his MO following after Clint.

 

“Fuck it,” he agrees. “Show me everything.”

 

Four hours later Bucky has a twitter handle that Clint assures him is generic and won’t easily be traced back to him, has an Instagram that Clint says is private and thus is allowed to be traced back to him, and lastly is in dubious possession of a tumblr blog that Clint suggests he devote to delicious food or cute animals.

 

“But what’s the point?” Bucky finally asks.

 

Clint shrugs. “What’s the point of any interaction?”

 

Bucky stares at him and says flatly, “I have two friends; I clearly don’t know the answer to that.”

 

“It’s fun.”

 

Bucky fails to see how any of this is _fun,_ but maybe he just has to try it. He’s dubious, but willing to do it if only for Clint’s sake.

 

“What about the phone background or whatever?”

 

“Oh!” Clint perks up again. “You make it pictures of things you like.”

 

Oh, not hard then. Bucky just has to _like_ things. “Show me yours,” he says, because getting an example might give him ideas.

 

Clint pulls out his own phone, scratched up and with some small cracks toward the bottom corner of the screen.

 

“Isn’t that supposed to be indestructible?”

 

Clint holds it up as if examining it. “Well, yeah, but it wasn’t made with _me_ in mind.”

 

He hands over his phone to Bucky, who presses the button on the front to make the lock screen light up. Behind the numbers telling the date and time is a picture of Lucky, tongue lolling out, against a grassy backdrop that Bucky recognizes as the park they walk to every day.

 

Clint doesn’t have a passcode, which Bucky privately thinks is a ridiculous choice for a former spy, so Bucky swipes to the home screen and is greeted with a picture of Clint and a dark-haired girl pulling faces at the camera. He tilts his head, examining the girl he doesn’t know. She looks young, in her twenties, maybe, and she’s pretty.

 

“That’s Kate,” Clint tells him. “She’s the one that co-owns Lucky with me.”

 

Bucky nods. He doesn’t know what to say about her or the picture, so he passes Clint’s phone back to him. “I guess I’ll use a picture of Lucky?” It seemed like cheating, to copy Clint, but also like a good idea. He likes Lucky, in a very neutral way—having a dog as his phone background will say very little about him as a person, which means he won’t be giving away more than he’s comfortable with.

 

“Cool. Do you want to take one or have me send you some?”

 

Bucky glances over at where Lucky is passed out on the couch next to him. His tongue is poking out just a bit from the side of his mouth, and his legs are twitching like he’s running in his sleep. Bucky swipes open his phone and carefully angles it, taking note of the lighting, to get the best picture he can manage.

 

“That’s cute,” Clint comments, looking over his shoulder at it. “You’ve got an eye for photography.”

 

Bucky shrugs. “Show me how to make it my background.” He watches as Clint taps through the buttons, explaining the process even though Bucky doesn’t need more help than just seeing him do it—even though he definitely could have figured it out on his own, given five minutes (or less) to experiment with the options.

 

“You can make Steve your lock screen!”

 

Bucky pulls a face, half teasing but half genuine. “I see enough of his ugly mug, why would I want to see it every time I look at my phone?”

 

Clint stares at him for a moment before laughing, seeming delighted. “I can’t believe you just called Steve ugly,” he crows. “Who do you think is the prettiest avenger?”

 

“Natasha,” Bucky answers, not even needing to think about it.

 

“Okay, other than Natasha.”

 

“Thor.”

 

“Okay, make Thor your background.”

 

Bucky frowns again. “I don’t even know Thor very well. That would be weird.”

 

Clint rolls his eyes. “Gosh, you’re difficult,” he complains, but he’s smiling at Bucky, so Bucky doesn’t think he really means it—or, at the very least, he isn’t actually bothered by it. “I’d say you should make me your background, but I’m sure you see enough of my ugly face, too.”

 

“Nah, you’re much prettier than Stevie,” Bucky says without thinking.

 

Clint snorts. “You’re definitely the only one who thinks so.”

 

Bucky pulls up the camera app and snaps a picture of Clint from the side before he can notice what’s happening. Then again, Clint has sharp eyes, so maybe he allows it to happen. Either way, Bucky ends up with a picture of Clint’s eyes sparkling and his mouth half open from talking. He looks animated and happy.

 

“Oh no, that picture is awful, delete it,” Clint complains.

 

“Nope, it’s my background now,” Bucky says, partly just to be contrary. But also partly because he does genuinely like the picture. So he follows through, making it the lock screen just the way Clint had showed him, smirking at Clint’s increasingly whining complaints.

 

“At least promise to change it when you find something better,” Clint huffs.

 

Bucky hums noncommittally. Clint glares. “We’ll see,” he allows, unwilling to make any promises.

 

“You’re evil,” Clint whines.

 

Bucky has to roll his eyes. “Kind of goes with the Winter Soldier territory.”

 

“Nah,” Clint says, waving a hand. Bucky notices the minute tension that has taken up residence in his shoulders, even though Clint is clearly trying to pretend it isn’t there. “That wasn’t you.” Before Bucky can attempt to protest that, he continues, “ _You,_ James Buchanan Barnes, are a dick. All the other stuff was just HYDRA being terrible.”

 

Bucky wonders how Clint got so good at taking the things his therapists have tried to communicate to him and making them actually seem sensible instead of ridiculous. He isn’t sure he totally buys Clint’s point, about him and the Winter Soldier being distinct and different, but he thinks maybe Clint’s point could help him move toward a grayer area than he’s currently existing in.

 

Bucky doesn’t want to talk about any of that, though—he has enough therapy, thank you very much—so he just smirks and says, “I’ve been an asshole since 1917, pal. If you’re just figuring that out now then you’re behind the times.”

 

“Yeah, whatever, old man,” Clint dismisses. “Want to watch a movie?”

 

Bucky shrugs. “I guess,” he agrees. It isn’t like he has anything better to do with his day, except maybe poke around with his new social media accounts and finish his current book, a history of the queer rights movements in the twentieth century. He’s still in the parts that are familiar to him, that he was alive for, but also hadn’t known a lot about, because it was a topic no one could bring up in polite conversation.

 

It’s a good book, but it will still be there later.

 

“What movie?” Bucky asks.

 

“What kind of movies do you like? I’ll watch almost anything.”

 

“Science fiction?” Bucky suggests.

 

Clint brightens. “You’re a nerd!”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I’m too pretty to be a nerd.”

 

Clint shakes his head. “Nope, nerds can be hot nowadays, it’s a thing. You’re definitely a nerd.”

 

“If you’re just gonna insult me, maybe I’ll go home,” Bucky shoots back, making absolutely no move to stand up or leave.

 

“Nerd isn’t even an insult,” Clint argues. “Like, maybe to some people, but mostly it’s just an identifier.”

 

“Whatever you say,” Bucky allows. “I guess you’re the expert.”

 

“Hell yeah I am.” Clint turns on the television and pulls up the movies that are saved to the tower’s network. “Ooh, have you seen this one?” he asks, pointing at what is on screen.

 

It’s a grayscale movie cover featuring two men and a woman, all looking intently into the camera. It announces the words “Star Trek” proudly, the name taking up a third of the movie’s cover.

 

“I think I’ve heard of it?”

 

Clint gasps. “Wait. You’re a nerd and no one’s told you about Star Trek?!”

 

Bucky crosses his arms. “I don’t exactly have a wide group of friends.”

 

Clint continues to gape at him. “But… but it’s one of the pinnacles of nerd culture!”

 

“You’re taking this nerd thing pretty far.”

 

Clint waves that aside. “Not the point, science fiction culture, whatever, what matters is that Star Trek is going to be the best thing you’ve ever seen.”

 

“Okay, sure, then let’s watch it,” Bucky agrees, mostly to make Clint stop looking at him with that strange mix of horror and excitement and glee.

 

“We can’t watch _this one,”_ Clint says, his tone implying that Bucky has said something absurdly ridiculous. Something sacrilegious, even, as if it wasn’t about a science fiction movie and they didn’t live with a Norse god.  

 

“Why not?” Bucky asks, because contrary to Clint’s apparent beliefs, he doesn’t actually know what the problem is.

 

“It’s the remake,” Clint says, again like this should be obvious to Bucky.

 

“Okay?”

 

Clint literally flails his arms around, apparently trying to communicate something with his body that he hasn’t been able to successfully communicate with words. “The original is always better than the remake.”

 

Bucky doesn’t think that is necessarily true—generalizations rarely are—but Clint says it with such conviction that Bucky doesn’t feel like arguing. Also, it isn’t like he has enough experience with originals versus their remakes to build a counterargument anyway.

 

“Okay,” he says again. “So let’s watch the original.”

 

“That’s a TV show,” Clint tells him. “You have to dedicate time to it.”

 

Bucky shrugs. “I got nothing but time.”

 

That was how he found himself watching Star Trek for the third hour in a row, starting to get a feel for the characters and the way the episodes were constructed, an empty bowl that had once been full of popcorn discarded on the living room table.

 

“So what do you think?” Clint asked after the fourth episode.

 

“Not bad,” Bucky admitted.

 

Clint’s eyes narrowed. “It’s fucking amazing, but maybe ‘not bad’ is your way of saying that, so I’ll let it slide.”

 

Bucky’s phone buzzed, and he opened it to see a text from Steve. _You alive?_

_Yeah I’ll be back soon_

“Steve’s asking where I am.”

 

Clint nodded. “I’m impressed he lasted this long.”

 

Bucky felt like maybe he should defend Steve, but he was sort of impressed too. “He probably asked JARVIS to check up on me half a dozen times.”

 

“Thirty-four, Sargent Barnes,” JARVIS chimed in from the ceiling.

 

Clint grinned. “Just a few more times than you thought, then.”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes, more at Steve than at Clint. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He shoves at Lucky, who had sprawled half across his lap at some point during the marathon of Star Trek, and the dog takes the hint and frees him to stand.

 

Clint follows him to the door. “Yeah, let me know when you want to watch more Star Trek too. I mean, you could watch it without me, but…”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes. He could say, _You’re assuming I want to watch more,_ just to see Clint’s indignation at the response. He could say, _I like watching it with you,_ just to see Clint’s discomfort at anything resembling sincerity or a compliment. But all he says is, “I’ll let you know.” Clint nods, and then Bucky’s out of his cozy apartment and in the hall, unsure of how this has somehow become his life.

 

He’s mostly just accepted that somehow this is his life by the time he gets back to his floor. Steve is, unfortunately, in the living room when he walks in.

 

“You were gone a while,” Steve greets.

 

“Thought you wanted me to make friends,” Bucky grouses back.

 

“I do,” Steve agrees easily. “Just guess it’s a change, is all.”

 

“Yeah, well.” Bucky shuffles uncomfortably, a tell he’s only comfortable exhibiting in Steve’s presence. “Dinner?”

 

Steve allows the subject change with a soft smile. “Sure, Buck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, the response to this fic has been amazing, and I'm so grateful for everyone's wonderful comments. This story is very special to me, so it's unbelievably awesome to see other people enjoying it. 
> 
> I'm going to try to hold to a weekly schedule for now, but finals are coming up, so there may be a week I miss or a chapter that comes a few days late. Luckily, once finals end, it's SUMMER, and I will have so much more time for writing. 
> 
> Lastly, if anyone wants to SPAG beta and maybe even bounce ideas with me, that would be awesome. 
> 
> <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky dog-sits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Self-beta'd because I ran out of time to send stuff to my actual beta, but after this week it'll be looked over by someone who isn't me! Yay!

A week and a half later—eleven walks and five hang out sessions and a couple dozen episodes of Star Trek later—Clint knocks on Bucky and Steve’s door.

 

Bucky wasn’t expecting him, or anyone, really, because the Avengers alarm went off during breakfast and everyone’s been rushing off to save the world. Bucky had actually been at team breakfast for once, but he didn’t feel like cleaning up after everyone, so he just cleared his own plate, left everyone else’s to congeal in unappealing ways, and headed back to his apartment to rest and watch mindless television and scroll through the social media feeds he is slowly growing to appreciate.

 

But he opens the door for Clint, who is looking a bit harried and a lot desperate. He’s mostly geared up, just missing his boots and his weapons, and Bucky absently notes that it’s weird to see him outfitted like this instead of in sweats and a stained purple hoodie. “What’s up?”

 

“Can you watch Lucky for me while we’re gone?”

 

Bucky blinks. “Don’t you have someone for that?”

 

Clint runs a hand through his hair, something he only does when he’s extremely unnerved. “Kate’s out of town, and Tony has some dog walkers I could hire that have been vetted, but I just… feel more comfortable knowing that there’s someone looking out for him? It’s dumb.”

 

“It’s not dumb,” Bucky says immediately. “But… me?”

 

Clint blinks, his anxiety momentarily derailed. “Uh, yeah? Lucky loves you.”

 

“Oh,” Bucky says. “Okay. What will I need to do?”

 

Clint grimaces. “Mostly just keep an eye on him? But he does need a few walks per day. Only one long one, but a few just to get him outside and give him a chance to pee every few hours. If you’re not up to that I really can just hire someone, though.”

 

Bucky wants to agree instantly, because Clint’s trusting him with something _important,_ but he owes it to both Clint and Lucky to actually consider whether or not he can handle it.

 

He’s gotten great at going out so long as he’s with someone these days. But he still doesn’t tend to leave the tower alone.

 

“If I can’t manage the long walk by myself, can I play with him inside to tire him out?”

 

Clint exhales in a rush. “Yeah, we shouldn’t be gone so long that that won’t work,” he agrees. “You’re sure?”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky assures him. “Go save the world from fire-breathing robot dragons or whatever.”

 

“Aw, man, I wish this mission was going to be that cool,” Clint complains. But after another moment he heads off to the elevator, calling, “Bye, Bucky!” over his shoulder.

 

Clint hadn’t brought Lucky down with him, so Bucky assumed he was upstairs in Clint’s rooms. Bucky looks at the half full pot of coffee on the counter, but then he knows there won’t be a lack of coffee in Clint’s apartment, so he can always make more upstairs. The only thing he needs other than what’s on him—his phone’s in his pocket pretty much all of the time these days, because Bucky doesn’t like to miss the memes from Clint and Steve’s taken to texting him about things if they’re not in the same room—is his current book. He’s pretty sure he’s probably read _Frankenstein_ before, but he doesn’t remember it, it’s good, and it’s pretty much the only science fiction book Steve owns, so that’s what he’s reading. He’s actually coming up on the end of Steve’s collection of books—not an easy feat—and he doesn’t really know what he’ll do with himself when that happens.

 

He shakes himself out of his distracted thoughts and heads out and to the elevator. He punches in the number for Clint’s floor and it takes him until he’s outside of Clint’s purple door to realize he doesn’t have a key.

 

“Uh, JARVIS?”

 

“Yes, Sargent Barnes?”

 

“You can call me Bucky,” he says without thinking about it. “Everyone else does.”

 

“As you wish, Bucky.” He thinks the AI sounds almost gratified, but then, if anyone could program emotions, it would be Stark. He’s particularly effusive; it makes sense that his creations would be as well. “How can I assist you?”

 

“Am I allowed to go into Clint’s rooms?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Bucky waits for him to say more, but the AI remains silent, so Bucky reaches out and tries the door. It swings open. “Is everyone allowed in?”

 

“No, access is permitted to those Agent Barton has allowed at any given time.”

 

“Huh.” Bucky doesn’t get why Steve’s so opposed to having JARVIS all up in their space—this is way more convenient and secure than keeping keys to locks that can so easily be picked.

 

He doesn’t get much more time than that before Lucky is bounding to the door, butt wiggling in excitement. Bucky braces to have to chase Lucky back into the apartment, but the dog stops just short of the doorway, somehow smiling up at him with his demeanor rather than his face.

 

As always, it’s humbling to have a living being so happy at the sight of him. He doesn’t feel like he deserves it, but he almost feels like he can allow himself to enjoy it anyway. “Hi pal,” he says, moving to step into the apartment. Lucky backs up, butt still wiggling with every motion, and when Bucky closes the door and steps inside, Lucky circles him excitedly.

 

Bucky feels his mouth curving into a smile and he lets it. “Wanna play?” he asks the dog, knowing it’s all but a rhetorical question.

 

Lucky barks softly and jumps up at Bucky’s legs. Bucky laughs at that and pets his head softly with his flesh hand.

 

“Come on,” he tells the excitable mutt. “Show me where your toys are.”

 

He can see for himself where at least some of them are, in that the toys are scattered across the floor and in no one place. But he figures Lucky might have a preference, and if Bucky goads him enough, maybe he’ll pick one out.

 

Lucky takes the hint and chooses a toy that looks like a stuffed duck, running over to grab it and bring it back to Bucky. Bucky is unsure of what to do with it, but he picks it up when Lucky drops it at his feet and, after glancing down at Lucky—for, what, confirmation that he’s doing the right thing?—he throws it across the room.

 

Lucky’s off like a shot, collecting the toy and bringing it back.

 

It’s an easy, mindless way to spend half an hour. Bucky gets better at throwing, aiming it at different parts of the room to keep things interesting. After about half an hour, though, Lucky’s starting to slow down, so Bucky drops to his knees to pet him when he brings the toy back instead of throwing it again.

 

“Good boy,” he tells the dog. “You did so well.”

 

Lucky loos ecstatic and happily relaxed, so maybe Bucky isn’t messing this up.

 

“Naptime?” he asks the dog. Lucky’s tail wags, thumping against the ground as it swishes. He’ll take that as a yes.

 

Lucky has beds fucking _everywhere,_ but he ignores all of them, planting himself in Bucky’s lap when Bucky sits down on Clint’s ridiculously comfy sofa with his book. Lucky’s too big to be a lap dog, of course, but he settles the front half of his body over Bucky’s thighs and rests his head on the arm of the couch, eye slowly falling shut after a few long and contented blinks. Bucky shrugs and rests his arms lightly on Lucky’s back, holding his book a bit closer to his face than he normally would.

 

It’s nice.

 

He loses track of time, but eventually Lucky wakes up and starts nosing under his hands. It takes Bucky a minute to figure out what he wants, but then he realizes that’s Lucky’s way of asking to be pet, and he sets down his book in order to comply with the dog’s insistent request.

 

Once Lucky’s had his fill of attention, he hops off of Bucky’s lap and stretches. He then eyes Bucky pointedly.

 

_Oh, right,_ Bucky thinks. _It’s probably time for a walk._

 

The hypothetical idea of leaving the tower with only Lucky for company had seemed achievable only a few hours ago. Now that the actual task is looming in front of him, he’s not sure.

 

“Short walk,” he tells Lucky.

 

He finds the leash on the floor near the door, where there’s clearly a hook specifically meant to hold the leash that Clint probably never gets around to actually using. Because that would make sense. The leash is, of course, purple, with little white and black arrows all down the length. Bucky hooks it on to Lucky’s collar, the dog standing perfectly still and then enthusiastically circling as soon as the leash is hooked into place.

 

Bucky’s smiling again. “Come on,” he tells the dog.

 

It feels weird not to need to lock the door on the way out, but he trusts JARVIS, so he leaves it.

 

When they step out of the elevator, Bucky can’t help but walk slowly toward the bright light of the early spring day outside. It’s sunny and looks like it might actually be approaching warm weather, like a perfect day, even, and Bucky’s overwhelmingly hesitant about stepping outside into it.

 

Lucky has no such reservations. He’s pulling ahead, tugging on the leash, something he almost never does, because he clearly can’t understand what the hold up is. He just wants to _go._

 

In the end, that’s what does it for Bucky. He and his fears aren’t what are important here; Lucky’s needs are the priority, and Bucky’s been watching him for a few hours and seen him drinking water occasionally while they were playing, so he knows the dog needs to pee.

 

He picks up the pace, and then they’re outside.

 

There are too many people around, and Bucky’s on high alert, but he manages to walk Lucky a few feet away from the building to where there’s a tree growing in one of those dirt squares cut out of the sidewalk. Lucky, seeming to sense that this is his shot, immediately lifts his leg.

 

Bucky feels like he should walk Lucky farther, but he also feels like he’s going to break someone’s arm if they brush up against him one more time on the crowded street.

 

Lucky, who Bucky thinks must be unnaturally perceptive for a dog, simply tugs him back toward the tower’s atrium.

 

Bucky realizes, when they get in the one elevator that leads up to the Avengers’ living quarters and communal floors, that he’s shaking. He reaches down and pets Lucky, who noses wetly at Bucky’s hand.

 

God, and he’s going to have to do this again in a few hours.

 

When they get back, Lucky flops onto one of his many beds, this one near the couch. Bucky takes a seat and considers his book, but he’s not really feeling up to the mental effort of reading.

 

He looks around for Clint’s television remote instead and doesn’t find it. That’s not necessarily a surprise, considering how messy Clint’s place is, but Bucky could really use something mindless to focus on right now.

 

“JARVIS?” he asks, unsure.

 

“Yes, Bucky?” comes the immediate reply.

 

“Can you work the TV? I don’t know where Clint’s remote went.”

 

“Of course, Bucky. What would you like to watch?”

 

Bucky _wants_ to watch more Star Trek, but he can’t without Clint. He’d watch the other science fiction series that people call a classic, Star Wars, but Clint’s promised they’ll watch that after Star Trek. So, no time soon, but someday.

 

There’s plenty of things he could watch, but he’s a little unmoored without a recommendation. “What does Clint usually watch?”

 

“Dog Cops,” JARVIS responds promptly.

 

Bucky hasn’t heard of that show. It sounds… dumb, if he’s being honest, but also he likes dogs. Maybe Lucky will even enjoy seeing other dogs on the TV.

 

“Sure, I’ll watch that,” Bucky tells JARVIS. The TV flicks on, and then some dogs with voice-overs are on screen. “Thanks, JARVIS.”

 

“You’re welcome, Bucky.”

 

By the time five more hours have passed, it’s almost mid-afternoon and Bucky’s getting tired. He realizes, belatedly, that he never had what’s come to be his standard pot or two of coffee this morning—and oh, no, is he turning into one of those people who can only get through the day with a cup of coffee? Clint has been a terrible influence.

 

As a _fuck you_ to caffeine addiction and also because he wants to be able to at least try to sleep tonight, he makes some decaffeinated tea he finds shoved in the back of one of Clint’s cupboards.

 

He’s sipping his tea and contemplating taking Lucky out again when the door bursts open. Bucky has a knife out before he’s even thought about it, his tea placed neatly on the counter in the same motion—he didn’t even spill a drop.

 

Then he recognizes the girl who burst in from the pictures on Clint’s phone. She’s clocked him and got her own knife out, a purple switchblade that she’s holding almost correctly, and Bucky’s not going to stab Clint’s friend, so he lowers the knife.

 

He does draw the line at putting his weapon away when she’s still armed. He could take her without it, of course he could, but also she’s been trained by Clint and he’s not _stupid._

 

“Kate, right?” he asks.

 

Her shoulders relax slightly. “You must be Bucky. Clint’s told me all about you.”

 

Bucky winces. “All good things, I hope.”

 

She hums noncommittally and folds up the switchblade, sticking it back in her purse. “Where’s Clint?”

 

“Avengers got called out. He asked me to watch Lucky. He said you were out of town?”

 

She rolls her eyes. “I got back early. I was going to ask if I could borrow Lucky for the weekend.”

 

“Oh,” Bucky says. He’s not sure what else to say. Clint has said they share Lucky, so she clearly has more claim to the dog than he does. But then, Clint had put him in charge of watching Lucky, so where does that leave him?

 

She rolls her eyes, but it doesn’t look like a mean gesture. “It’s fine, I’ll steal him when Clint’s back.”

 

“You could… stay?” Bucky offers. “I was going to take him out for a walk.”

 

Lucky’s ears perk up at that word, and Kate laughs. It’s a loud laugh, but somehow instead of being obnoxious, it just fills the space pleasantly. “Yeah, of course,” she agrees. “I have to leave in a few hours, but that gives me enough time to tell you a bunch of embarrassing stories about Clint.”

 

The walk with Kate goes much better than his solo walk. It’s not on the same level as walking the city with Steve or Clint, who he trusts, but it’s better than being alone. Kate can (probably) take care of herself, and it’s nice to have backup in case something goes wrong.

 

Plus, she tells him amusing and horrifying stories about Clint—about how he rescued Lucky from the Russian mob, about how he once was testing a boomerang arrow and knocked himself out, about how before the other Avengers put a stop to it he used to feed Lucky a steady diet of pizza—and talks almost as much as Clint can when he gets going.

 

They make it all the way to the park and back, and Bucky’s only shaking a little bit by the time they’re back in the elevator.

 

Back in Clint’s apartment, Bucky asks JARVIS to order them a pizza, because all of that talk about pizza has made him hungry.

 

“Good thinking,” Kate calls from where she’s rolling on the floor with Lucky.

 

She stays for pizza and leaves shortly after they demolish three large boxes of it. “It was nice to meet you,” she tells him, sounding like she actually means it.

 

_What the hell,_ Bucky thinks, because he could probably do with having three friends instead of just two. He holds out a hand to shake hers. “You, too,” he tells her. “Feel free to tell me embarrassing stories about Clint anytime.”

 

She cracks a grin, but gets distracted by her phone buzzing. She answers it and waves at Bucky over her shoulder, letting herself out.

 

Bucky falls asleep on the couch, Lucky sprawled on top of him. It’s too early to sleep—only seven in the evening—but that’s what he gets for stubbornly refusing caffeine.

 

He wakes up when someone enters the room. The lights are still on from earlier, so he can see Clint trying (and failing) to be quiet as he pulls off his boots by the door.

 

“Hey,” Bucky says quietly. “How’d it go?”

 

Clint looks up at him. There’s a cut across his forehead that’s left bloody streaks down his face, but he looks otherwise unharmed. “Fine,” Clint tells him softly. “Sam took a hit that has him in medical, so Steve’s over there with him.”

 

Bucky nods. He’s sorry in the way you’re sorry when the friend of a friend gets hurt, but mostly he’s just relieved that Clint and Steve are mostly in one piece. “I met Kate,” he says.

 

“Katie-Kate’s back?”

 

Bucky shrugs. “Said she got home early and wanted to steal Lucky.”

 

Clint gestures at where Lucky’s still slumped mostly across Bucky. “And yet?”

 

Bucky shrugs again. “She was busy anyway. Said she’d steal him later.”

 

“How long was she here?”

 

Bucky can sense the undercurrent of worry in Clint’s words. It makes him grin. “Long enough to tell me plenty of stories about you being a disaster.”

 

Clint groans. “Of course.”

 

Bucky, still grinning, looks down at where Lucky’s slowly waking up. “I fell asleep before I could take him on his last walk,” he tells Clint.

 

Clint shrugs. “It’s cool, I can take him down before I crash.”

 

“You just took your boots off,” Bucky points out.

 

Clint blinks down at his socked feet. “Huh,” he says. “So I did.” He digs around in the pile of shoes next to the door before coming up with two beat up sneakers. “These’ll do.”

 

“You’re going out like that?” Bucky asks, gesturing at where Clint’s still in his Avengers uniform save for the sneakers, not to mention with dried blood still streaked across his face.

 

Clint shrugs. “It’s New York.”

 

“I’m coming down with you,” Bucky decides. “Can’t let Lucky get kidnapped because you’re dead on your feet.”

 

Clint looks like he’s gearing up to protest, but then he sighs and nods. “You’re probably right.”

 

Bucky gets Lucky all geared up and puts on his own shoes before nudging Clint out the door. They make it down and outside in companionable silence, Clint barely awake now that he’s home, Bucky barely awake from his earlier nap. The moon is bright and full, giving off enough light for them to easily see even in the shadow of the building.

 

Like this morning, Lucky easily does his business and tugs them back inside, clearly ready to sleep more.

 

“He’s such a good dog,” Bucky comments.

 

Clint nods. “I’d take the credit for it, but he mostly came to me that way.”

 

“Kate says you rescued him,” Bucky prompts.

 

Clint doesn’t take the bait, just nods. “Yeah,” he agrees, and leaves it at that.

 

Bucky presses the button the elevator for his and Steve’s floor, planning to leave Clint in peace. “See you tomorrow,” he says before exiting when it stops on his floor.

 

“Thanks for watching Lucky,” Clint replies.

 

“Any time,” Bucky says.

 

Clint smiles softly at him, and then the door’s shut and Clint and Lucky are gone.

 

Bucky feels suddenly, sharply alone. He’s aware, all in a rush, that he wants nothing more than to be going upstairs with Clint, existing quietly in his and Lucky’s space. He feels at home with them in the same way he feels with Steve—or not the same way, actually, because Steve is home like family, and Clint is home like… something else.

 

Bucky shakes his head and unlocks his apartment. If he’s getting moody, then it’s definitely time to go to bed and lay there staring at the ceiling, pretending to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint gets Bucky into trouble. Also, PIE.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks endlessly to sajastar for beta-ing and not only fixing my grammar but noticing inconsistencies that hadn't even occurred to me. This chapter is WAY better for their efforts. <3

They’re in the middle of watching Star Trek a few days later when Clint asks out of nowhere, “Do you still shoot?”

 

Bucky’s absorbed in the plot, so it takes a moment for Clint’s question to process. When it does, rather than steal the remote, he just says, “JARVIS, could you pause the TV?”

 

The room descends into silence, and Bucky turns to look at Clint. “Not allowed,” he eventually replies.

 

Clint frowns. “Fuck that. Do you want still want to?”

 

Bucky thinks about that. He thinks about the clarity he’s always felt as a sniper—and he has memories of himself during the war in a sniper’s perch, he knows this isn’t something unique to his self as the Winter Soldier—but also of the lives he’s been coerced into taking against his will. “I don’t know,” he says eventually. “I doubt I’m going to get the chance to find out any time soon.”

 

Clint has a look on his face that reminds Bucky of when Steve’s about to get in a fight for moral reasons. He’s never seen it on Clint, so he can’t say for sure that’s what it is, but that look is a guaranteed way to make him nervous, to set him waiting for the other shoe to drop, to have him ready to jump into a fight and finish it.

 

“If you had the chance, would you try?”

 

Bucky shrugs. “Yeah, probably.”

 

Clint doesn’t say anything, just glowers in the direction of the TV. After a few moments, when Clint continues to say nothing, Bucky says, “Thanks, JARVIS, could you make it play again?”

 

He settles back into watching the antics of Spock and Kirk and has forgotten about the conversation by the time Clint’s relaxed back into the couch next to him.

 

***

 

A week later, Bucky’s phone buzzes with a text from Clint at 9 am. He’s awake—barely—and contemplating coffee, the old dependency versus comfort argument going around in circles in his head. He spends enough time with Clint that dependency is going to be a fact sooner or later, but that alone makes him stubborn enough to stave it off for now.

 

He settles for tea, hoping the warmth will chase away the lingering cold of his nightmares, and checks Clint’s text.

 

_ Meet me at the gym. _

 

Bucky considers the text, the tea, and the fact that he has read receipts turned on.  _ When? _

 

Clint texts back  _ sooner than later,  _ which isn’t as dire as ASAP but which Bucky has a feeling actually means  _ before Steve gets back,  _ so he hurries up in drinking his tea before washing out the mug and getting dressed for the day.

 

When he joins Clint, fifteen minutes after reading the text, he’s in jeans and a black v-neck shirt, because he doesn’t plan on working out and Clint hadn’t specified what he should wear, anyway. Clint’s up in the rafters of the room that Bucky’s 99% sure are just there so Clint has a place to climb.

 

“What’s up?”

 

Clint drops a rope that’s attached to a grappling arrow in the rafters and nimbly climbs back down to the ground. “How good are you at keeping secrets?”

 

Bucky arches an eyebrow. “Former Winter Soldier,” he points out.

 

“Yeah,  _ former,”  _ Clint says. “Doesn’t tell me shit about how you feel about keeping secrets now.”

 

Bucky feels warmed by the distinction. He knew Clint didn’t see him only as the Winter Soldier—obviously, who would want to be friends with  _ that— _ but it’s always nice to be reminded that he’s more than the worst parts of himself.

 

“Depends on the secret, I guess,” he decides, after thinking it through.

 

Clint grins like that’s just the answer he was waiting for. “Come on, then.” He grabs onto Bucky’s metal hand and tugs him toward the range.

 

Bucky follows Clint in happily enough; he’s allowed  _ in  _ the range, he just isn’t allowed to use any weapons. Even that gets a bit hand-wavey; he’s got his knives and everyone knows it, but Steve firmly said it was fine and everyone’s been going along with that. He felt, at first, like they were just waiting for him to slip up, but now it’s been long enough that everyone seems more or less fine with the fact.

 

But when Clint pulls out a Barrett M83 and tries to hand it to Bucky, he feels himself tense. “Not allowed,” he says firmly.

 

Clint wiggles the rifle, and Bucky can’t allow for  _ that;  _ he’s snatching it from Clint’s hand before he even realizes what he’s doing. Clint looks annoyingly pleased and smug.

 

“I can’t,” Bucky says again, but now that it’s in his hands, he can’t help but consider it. It’s a lot harder to say no when he can feel the familiar weight, and his eyes are drawn to the rifle, inspecting it thoroughly. As anticipated from any Avengers weaponry, it’s perfect.

 

Bucky looks up to meet Clint’s eyes, where he finds only understanding and encouragement. “Fuck,” Bucky bites out, before snagging a box of ammo and loading the gun, checking it over as he goes.

 

Clint restrains himself from saying anything, for which Bucky is grateful, but all that gratitude turns into an unwelcome fond annoyance when, out of the corner of his eye, he catches Clint doing a fist-pump of victory as he turns away.

 

Shooting at just the target on his lane is too easy. There’s no one else in the range, only Clint lounging against the walls behind him, so Bucky decides if he’s already breaking the rules, he might as well give himself (somewhat of) a challenge. He picks his own targets—sometimes the center of a target, sometimes an edge of an outside ring, sometimes his own lane, sometimes one of the others. The focus and clarity are exhilarating after months of anxiety and brain fog.

 

He isn’t sure how long he shoots—it can’t be too long, he only goes through one box of ammo—but when he finishes and turns away, safety checking the gun, he feels relaxed.

 

“Better?” Clint asks, moving forward to Bucky’s side once more.

 

Bucky wants to snark at him, would if it were anyone else, but this is Clint, who  _ understands.  _ “Yeah,” he says with a sigh. He can’t help but think about the fact that there’s no way JARVIS won’t tell on them for this. “Will it be worth the trouble, though?”

 

Clint shrugs. “For me, yeah. You’re the only one that can answer that for you.”

 

It’s ominous. It’s self-affirming. It’s not a platitude or a lie. “Yeah,” is all Bucky can say back. “I guess we’ll see.”

 

***

 

Inevitably, a team meeting gets called, which Steve stubbornly drags Bucky to, saying that if he’s going to break the rules, he might as well have the option to stand up for himself.

 

Bucky wonders what to say to that. Clint peer-pressured him into it? From one angle, if you squint, it could be the truth. But it’s a lie to the authenticity of Clint’s intentions—to help, to soothe, maybe even to aid Bucky in reclaiming a part of himself everyone else has written off simply because they find it dangerous. Find  _ him  _ dangerous.

 

In the end, he says very little. The team throws around accusations and fears and concerns, Steve and Tony at the head of it all fighting each other on everything. 

 

Clint catches Bucky’s eye and rolls his. Bucky has to hide a small snort of agreement.

 

But after a few rounds of this circular arguing, Clint speaks up. “I notice no one has asked Bucky about  _ why  _ he did it,” he says loudly, and the room falls silent. “All your shouting voices might be hard to distinguish from one another,” he says, gesturing at his hearing aids, “but even I’ve picked up on that.”

 

Steve looks chagrined. Tony looks defiant. Natasha looks as impassive as ever. Bruce left the room minutes after the meeting started.

 

It’s Thor who speaks. “Clint is correct,” he acknowledges, with a dip of his head, before he looks up and meets Bucky’s startled gaze. “Friend Barnes, would you share your reasons with us?”

 

“Um,” he says, suddenly on the spot. He glances at Clint, who gives him an encouraging nod, and then around at everyone else, one at a time. “Clint asked me if I missed it,” he says after a moment, “and I did. I wanted to know if that part of me was gone forever, or if…” he trails off.

 

“How did you feel?” Natasha asks, perceptive as always.

 

Bucky can’t help but smile, softly, a bit sad because he knows no one else around the table, Clint excepted, will understand. “Calm,” he says. “Focused.” He doesn’t say  _ good  _ because he doesn’t want to reignite everyone’s worries that holding a gun will trigger his return to the state of a brainwashed assassin.

 

“Not like murdering the innocent, then?” Tony asks.

 

Steve glares and opens his mouth to speak, but Clint beats him to it. “I wouldn’t have given him a gun if I didn’t trust him, and anyway, I was there the whole time.”

 

Natasha’s raised eyebrow says something about her disbelief in Clint’s ability to take on the Winter Soldier; Bucky doesn’t know if he should be pleased with her appraisal of his skills or disgusted by the skills in general, by the idea that he would ever use them against anyone, against  _ Clint. _

 

“Anyway,” Clint continues, after pausing to flip Natasha off and maybe for dramatic effect, too, “if anyone asked me to give up that part of myself, well, I don’t even have to imagine, you all remember exactly how well that went.”

 

There’s a round of winces around the room, and Bucky perks up slightly, hoping for the story. Unfortunately, no one elaborates.

 

“It’s different.” That comes from Steve, and because it’s from Steve, it has the power to hurt Bucky.

 

He’s contemplating storming out—Steve was the one who wanted him here, and now he’s not even on Bucky’s side?—but Clint, seated across from Bucky, stretches his leg out and bumps it against Bucky’s. The friendly contact is enough to settle him, slightly; the reminder that someone gets all the things going through his head.

 

One day, he hopes Clint will tell him how he  _ knows.  _ Bucky knows the basics, the outline of events, but he doesn’t know the details or the aftermath.

 

“At some point, you all had to choose to trust me,” Clint says, meeting Steve’s gaze, his own eyes hard. “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to chose whether or not to trust him, too.”

 

“It’s not that I don’t trust—” Steve starts, and Bucky’s abruptly done.

 

“That’s shit,” he says. He pushes away from the table, and when he looks up, Clint’s already moving, pushing himself out of his seat. “I’m done. Decide whatever you’re arguing about without me.”

 

He storms away, hears Steve try to follow and someone—Clint, he bets—shove him back into his seat.

 

He doesn’t want to go back to his apartment, where Steve can easily find him. He doesn’t want to go to the common floors and risk seeing anyone else when the team meeting eventually disbands. He could go to the roof, but what he really wants, for the first time, is to get  _ out, away.  _ Just to remind himself he can.

 

“Walk?” he asks Clint. He can’t hear the other man’s footsteps, they’re too light on the floor, but he can sense that he’s been followed, and he trusts that Clint would have stopped anyone else from coming after him.

 

“Sure,” Clint agrees, falling into step beside him, bumping his shoulder lightly, like this is any other day. “With or without Lucky?”

 

“Without,” Bucky says, “if that’s—”

 

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “It’s fine.”

 

Bucky doesn’t have his coat or his gloves. He doesn’t care. He isn’t going back for them. The only concession he makes is to bury the metal hand in the pocket of his jeans, leaving his arm hanging at his side, so it might appear more like a prosthetic than like a bionic limb.

 

His feet take him in the direction of the park, and Clint seems content to follow. When they get there, Bucky doesn’t know what to do now that Lucky isn’t with them. Clint keeps going, though, over to their usual cart for warm drinks. Bucky waits a few feet away and accepts the cup that Clint hands him when he returns.

 

He’s expecting coffee, so he’s surprised to taste tea: mint and sugar and warmth. “Thank you.”

 

Clint shrugs, like he didn’t clearly put thought into what might make Bucky feel better. He downs his coffee faster than should be humanly possible, as always, and then asks, “What now?”

 

Bucky doesn’t know; the need for space had been so strong that he hadn’t considered where he was going, only getting away for a while. But he thinks of the things he still wants to do this century that he hasn’t tried yet, and he settles on an easy one. “Diner pie.”

 

Clint grins and nods like that’s a normal request in the middle of the day; but then, Clint will eat pizza at eleven in the morning and three in the afternoon and every other time in between, so maybe he doesn’t understand normal food desires.

 

Or more likely, he just doesn’t give a fuck what other people think is normal. Bucky imagines that’s liberating; he can’t imagine a life where he didn’t have to consider how other people would respond before he did every little thing.

  
“I know a place,” Clint tells him. “It’s a walk, but their pie is pretty good.”

 

“Not holding out for the best pie?”

 

Clint scoffs and starts heading away from the park. Bucky falls in step beside him. “The best pie isn’t found in Manhattan,” he says. “We’d have to go to Brooklyn for that.”

 

Bucky feels a rush of longing—to go to Brooklyn, to see the place where he grew up and see how much it’s changed—but there’s no easy way to get there.

 

He thinks, though, that he’ll be able to do that one day—trust riding in a car for long enough, or maybe trust himself on the crowded subway with other people—and it’s a little jarring. To have the hope that one day he can just be a person, like everyone else. It makes him bold. “You’ll have to show me sometime, then,” he says, almost casual about it.

 

Clint doesn’t seem to notice any hesitation, at least. “Definitely,” he responds easily. “Just tell me when.”

 

They walk mostly in silence, and it’s nice. Lately, silence sets Bucky on edge—with so many more people talking to him and spending time around him, silences make him feel like he’s supposed to be filling them, but then he has to work out the correct thing to say in any given instance, and it’s  _ a lot— _ but silence has never been an issue with Clint. If he wants Bucky to talk, he’ll start a conversation; he’s never assessing Bucky’s social skills or reading into the things he says.

 

He’s just Bucky’s friend, in a way even Steve can’t always be, because Steve is responsible for keeping Bucky safe from everyone else and everyone else safe from Bucky.

 

Bucky doesn’t resent that (much), and he certainly doesn’t envy Steve’s position. But sometimes (always), it’s nice to have the reminder that he’s more than just a threat to be assessed.

 

“You’re brooding,” Clint comments.

 

Bucky’s instinct is to say that he’s not, but. Well. “Yeah,” he agrees, because he can feel his eyebrows pulling together and his eyes are definitely narrowed. He’s noticed himself scaring a few passersby into giving them an actual berth—only of a couple inches, it’s still New York, but  _ because  _ it’s New York those few inches are notable—and a couple sideways glances.

 

“You can brood for now, but not once we’ve got pie.”

 

“Why’s that?”

 

“Because brooding over pie is just wrong,” Clint says. “Unless it’s bad pie. Then you can brood over wanting better pie, and nothing else.”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

 

“Yep,” Clint agrees easily. “Sorry I got you in trouble.”

 

Bucky shrugs. “It was worth it,” he says after a minute. “It helped.” He could say more, but he isn’t in the mood to dig up words to explain all of the things he’s feeling now, that he’s felt today. It’s too close still.

 

“Good.”

 

It’s another twenty or so minutes until they reach the too-nice diner Clint’s directed them to, but they walk close enough that their shoulders brush every few steps, and Bucky feels grounded enough by the time they get there that he’s more calm than brooding. It’s progress.

 

A cheerful waitress leads them to a booth in the corner, and Clint allows Bucky to have the seat that will put his back to the wall.

 

The menu looks good, if pricier than a diner has any right to be, even accounting for modern day inflation. The pie menu is extensive—it seems like that and the coffee are what they’re known for.

 

“Of course you brought me to a place that sells fancy coffee,” Bucky says, half accusatory and half fond.

 

“What do you think brought me here in the first place?” Clint counters. He starts to say something, stops, and closes his mouth all before opening it again. “After Loki, after they let me off of psych watch but before they let me go back to active duty, I had to do something with my time, you know? I spent a lot of time wandering the city, first Manhattan and then all the other boroughs, but it felt wrong not having a purpose. So I decided to find and rank all of the so-called best places to find coffee in New York.”

 

It's the first time Clint’s talked about this, about why he understands Bucky so intuitively. He’s pleased by the trust, and unbearably sad to imagine Clint lost and wandering and alone, but neither of those feelings are useful here. “Where did this place rank?”

 

“Mid-way on coffee and much higher on pie,” Clint responds promptly. “Ninety-eight for coffee, if I remember correctly.”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “How many places did you go?”

 

“I may have lost count,” Clint admits.

 

Bucky opens his mouth to say something disparaging, but the waitress returns to take their orders before he can. He quickly skims the pie menu, but he knows what he wants as soon as his eyes catch on the words. “Black coffee and apple pie for me, please,” he tells her when it’s his turn.

 

“Boring,” Clint tells him.

 

“The coffee or the pie?”

 

“Both,” Clint says. “I ordered a pumpkin spice latte and chocolate pudding pie.”

 

“Horrible combination,” Bucky tells him. “And it’s not even fall, why would you get pumpkin spice?”

 

“Good coffee combinations cannot be limited to one time of year.” Bucky raises a skeptical eyebrow. “What’s with the apple pie, anyway? I would have pegged Steve to be the apple pie lifestyle one.”

 

Bucky doesn’t even try to disentangle that mess of words. “My ma used to make it when we could spare the money for a treat.”

 

“Oh,” Clint says, then, “what was your ma like?”

 

Bucky frowns, pulling forth what memories he has. “She was always tired, from what I remember. But then, she was up before dawn every morning and the last one to bed at night. She chased after me and my sisters during the day, in between making money sewing—hemming, doing alterations, you name it. But she was always kind.”

 

“That sounds nice,” Clint remarks. “My mother tried, but she put up with my dad’s shit, and she was dragged down by it in the end. The circus was terrible, but sometimes I still think it was better than the years I spent at home.”

 

Bucky nods. “I don’t have many memories of my dad, but Steve says that’s for the best.”

 

Their silence closes in on brooding again, but as if the universe wanted to enforce Clint’s arbitrary rule, the pie and coffee show up then, along with their beaming waitress.

 

“Is there anything else I can get for y’all?” she asks.

 

“No thank you,” Bucky tells her after a glance at Clint. He smiles back at her, his own less large but about equally as genuine.

 

“Just holler if you need anything,” she replies with a wink, before bustling away to one of her other tables.

 

“No brooding over pie,” Bucky reminds Clint. “Yours is chocolate, so you have even less reason.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Clint grumbles, clearly trying not to smile. “Use my own words against me, why don’t you.”

 

Bucky ignores him in favor of the apple pie before him. It has a perfect lattice crust and large chunks of apple with goo oozing out the sides. He can’t remember what it's supposed to taste like, so after a moment of trying in vain to recall, he cuts off a piece and hesitantly tries it.

 

It's sweet and warm, the crust crumbling against his tongue. It doesn’t shake loose any memories, doesn’t even necessarily taste familiar, but that's okay. It's nice; it's something he can add to his list of things he likes, can maybe even try to make in his and Steve’s large kitchen that has more specialized appliances than they know what to do with. Now he has a taste to put with his old memories, even if it isn’t exact.

 

“How is it?” Clint asks. Bucky looks up to see that Clint has inhaled half of his pie already, and there is some whipped cream on the end of his nose that he hasn’t noticed. Bucky thinks about telling him. He doesn't. 

 

“It’s good.”

 

“Good,” Clint echoes, and goes back to devouring his own slice.

 

Bucky alternates between sipping his coffee and taking small bites of his pie, savoring not only the pie but the moment.

 

When Clint finishes, he leans his elbows on the table and props his head in his hands, watching Bucky with half-lidded eyes. It isn’t long before he is lost in thought, and Bucky takes the opportunity to study Clint unnoticed.

 

He knows Clint’s face better than this own these days, almost as well as Steve’s, but it makes him happy to trace his eyes over the lines and curves, studying his crooked nose and the arch of his eyebrows, the messy sweep of his hair casting shadows across the expanse of his forehead.

 

Underneath the warm comfort he finds in the familiarity, something in Bucky’s stomach winds tight. It takes him a moment to figure out what it is, and then he recognizes it as attraction: not the fleeting attraction of seeing a handsome stranger, but the stronger pulse of want that comes from knowing someone and wanting them because of it.  _ Oh. _

 

He glances away from Clint and works on finishing his pie, focusing on the taste and not his feelings.  _ Mindfulness,  _ or whatever, is supposed to distract him from anxiety, not a crush, but it works just as well.

 

“What are you going to do when we go back?” Clint finally asks. When Bucky glances up, Clint’s gaze had sharpened again, focused on Bucky once more.

 

“I don’t know,” Bucky admits. He spears another piece of pie, but he can’t make himself do more than push it around his small plate. “I’m sick of their scrutiny. I understand it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to handle.”

 

Clint nods. “You could…” he starts, and then he stops.

 

“I could…?” Bucky prods after a few moments.

 

Clint sighs, but he meets Bucky’s eyes briefly before he looks away. “You could move in with me, if you want. That way everyone’s satisfied that you’re not on your  own, but you have somewhere to be without that level of pressure.”

 

It’s not an offer Bucky was expecting. And he  _ wants  _ it, so bad. But.

 

But he likes living with Steve, for all the tense moments and his current anger with his best friend. What if he does get triggered and Natasha’s fears come to fruition, and Bucky hurts Clint? Most importantly, what will happen with those feelings of attraction Bucky’s feeling for his first new friend in decades, if they’re living in even closer proximity? Will they fade, or will they intensify?

 

In the end, Bucky gives in to what he wants in spite of his fears. He’s too unused to wanting things, and it’s too clear that Clint feels he’s made himself vulnerable in offering, his shoulders tense and his eyes angled carefully away from Bucky.

 

“I think that could be good,” Bucky says.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, but then can’t help but say, “you know Steve is going to be  _ pissed,  _ right?”

 

Clint shrugs. “Steve’s anger is less important than your welfare,” he says, like it’s that simple. It kind of blows Bucky’s mind.

 

“Your funeral,” is all he says. “I’m still taking over your rooms if he kills you.”

 

Clint laughs, sounding delighted. “Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this chapter A LOT, but this is also where the story started to kind of get away from me and write itself while I sat here side-eyeing it, so?? Hopefully you like it!
> 
> Next chapter probably won't be up for a couple of weeks again as I'm in the middle of finals, BUT I have the beginning of a CB Bingo piece that I might put up next weekend.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another round of endless thanks to sajastar for beta-ing and not only fixing my grammar but noticing inconsistencies that once again hadn't even occurred to me. This chapter is WAY better thanks to them. <3

 

 

When they get back to the tower, Clint goes to walk Lucky, and Bucky goes to find Steve.

Steve is, predictably, in the gym, punching a bag that looks the worse for it. “Hey,” Bucky greets him, subdued. His anger has faded over the course of the last few hours, to a simmering mix of betrayal and disappointment and self-loathing. It’s not his favorite way to feel, that’s for sure.

Steve whips around, arms falling to his sides, posture slumping from a fighting stance to something dejected. “I’m sorry,” Steve says. It would be underwhelming if Bucky didn’t know how hard it was for Steve to apologize.

“You always do what you think is right,” Bucky tells him slowly. “I can’t be too angry with you for that.”

“I just want to keep you safe.”

“I know,” Bucky agrees. “But…” he trails off. All the long walk back to the tower he’d thought about how to break this to Steve, and he still doesn’t know a way to say it that won’t hurt him.

He’s so sick of hurting people he cares about. But he’s also kind of sick of hurting, so it’s a no-win scenario, and maybe he just needs to be honest.

“This isn’t working,” he tells Steve carefully. “I know you all have a good reason not to trust me, but Clint was right.”

“I trust you, Buck.” Steve sounds so earnest; he believes that, he truly does, and Bucky loves his best friend so much, but sometimes he’s wrong.

“You can’t,” he tells Steve. “You’re in a position where you have to be wary of me, and I get that. But, I think I need…”

“What?” Steve prompts. “How can I help?”

Bucky takes a deep breath in before letting it out in a sigh. “Clint said I can move in with him. I said yes.”

Steve’s face looks just as betrayed as Bucky thought it might, and a small part of Bucky feels vindicated that Steve knows how he felt earlier, but the majority of him hurts for hurting Steve. “Why?”

“I need to learn to trust myself, and I can’t do that around the rest of you. Clint trusts me.” Steve looks like he wants to argue. Bucky doesn’t think he can handle a big blowout, not right now, when he’s so tired and done with today. “Please, Steve. I’m making a choice for myself. I’m not leaving the tower. You’ll still see me all the time. But I need this, and I think it will help you too.”

Steve doesn’t look any happier, but he says, “Okay.”

Just like that, the vice around Bucky’s lungs that he hadn’t even been aware of lets up. He can breathe again. “Thanks, Stevie.”

Steve goes back to punching, and Bucky retreats to their rooms—his former rooms, now—to pack up his stuff. Then he heads to Clint’s floor and knocks.

Clint and Lucky must not be back yet, because there’s no response. “Uh, Jarvis?” Bucky asks.

“Yes, Bucky?”

“Am I allowed in?”

“Yes.”

Well, okay then. Bucky opens the door, hesitating only a bit, and moves into Clint’s now familiar living space with his bags. He leaves them inside the door, because Clint is agreeing to carve out some of his space for Bucky, and he’s much too appreciative—not to mention aware—of that fact to claim space without asking first. Instead, he pokes around the living room, inspecting the bookshelves he’s never paid too much attention to in the past.

There’s a lot of classics that Bucky wouldn’t have expected, both books he knows from school—what might as well have been a lifetime ago, and it’s reassuring that books older than he is are still being passed around—and ones he knows from lists like “Best Books of the Twentieth Century” and “Ten Best Modern Classics”. There’s the _Harry Potter_ series, which he’s been meaning to read and seen on a fair few lists despite the fact that they’re children’s books, and mixed in amongst books like _The Great Gatsby,_ which Bucky remembers liking, even if he’s lost track of what it might have been about.

He hears the door open behind him, and turns away from the shelves to see Lucky straining at his leash to get to Bucky.

“Hey there,” Bucky says to the happy dog. “Did you have a nice walk?”

Clint unhooks the leash and Lucky bounds over, glances at Clint, sees he’s distracted with hanging up the leash, and quickly jumps up, muddy paws making prints on Bucky’s shirt. Bucky doesn’t bother to chastise Lucky for the “bad” behavior, instead patting his head gently. “Good boy,” he tells the dog softly. “Now quick, get down before Clint notices.”

Lucky, hearing the words “get down,” immediately drops back onto all fours. Clint, hearing the full sentence, looks over and rolls his eyes at the mud stains on Bucky’s shirt.

“You spoil him,” Clint accuses. Bucky shrugs; there’s no point in denying it.

“Where should I put my stuff?” he asks Clint instead, because for all the time he’s spent in this apartment, he’s only ever seen the guest bathroom and the main living area.

“Oh, shit, yeah.” Clint kicks off his shoes, leaving a dirt mark on the wall, and Bucky tries very hard to find it endearing instead of obnoxious. “Stark gave us all huge suites, and I’ve got two spare rooms, so you can pick.” He heads off down the hallway, and Bucky follows, still feeling out of place.

Clint opens a door on the left, across from the guest bathroom—or, Bucky supposes, his bathroom now. The room isn’t small by any means—it’s more than half the size of his and Steve’s old apartment in the thirties—but it is very basic, with a closet and a dresser and a bed / bedside table combo. Everything matches in a way that says Pepper hired a designer to put it together and Clint never touched it after that. There’s decorative pillows on the bed.

“Don’t have a lot of guests?” Bucky asks, and then winces, realizing how much of an asshole that comment makes him sound like.

Clint shrugs. “Kate doesn’t like the tower, so we usually crash at her place when we hang out.”

Bucky nods. He does not say anything else, because honestly, after that last comment, he doesn’t know he trusts the words that might come out of his mouth.

“The other room is down here,” Clint says. He heads deeper down the hall. The room is also on the left, and when Clint opens the door, it looks almost identical. “Mine’s across the hall.”

Bucky thinks, for a moment, about being closer to Clint: what a bad idea it is, and yet.

And then he thinks about the nightmares he still has, and how most of the time he just wakes up frozen, sweating, and unsure of where he is, but how sometimes, he screams until he wakes himself up—he banned Steve from trying to wake him after the third time he got punched, because Bucky’s done hurting the people he cares about, thank you very much.

He knows that Clint sleeps without his hearing aids, and that he probably wouldn’t hear Bucky screaming, but… “I’ll take the first room,” he decides.

“Okay,” Clint agrees easily. “Just tell me whatever you want to add to it, or ask Jarvis and have him place an order.”

Bucky blinks. “I can just ask Jarvis for things?”

“Uh, yeah?”

Bucky thinks of all the clothes he can order, now that he doesn’t have to feel guilty asking Steve. He thinks about all the books he can order. It’s got to be on someone’s dime—most likely Stark’s, and he can spare the money; he probably won’t even notice its absence.

Bucky grins.

Clint points at him and says, “No, no grinning like that, you look like Natasha and I cannot deal with that,” but there’s a smile tugging at the edges of his lips.

“You shouldn’t make a habit of befriending the world’s deadliest assassins, then,” Bucky counters.

Clint shrugs. “What can I say? I’m just awesome like that.”

“You’re something.”

Clint rolls his eyes. “Okay, rude. Whatever. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen, and feel free to make a list of things you want.” Bucky waits, but Clint doesn’t say anything else, which is unfortunate, because he hasn’t addressed the one thing Bucky’s most interested in.

“Can I read your books?” Bucky blurts out in a rush. “I mean, I can get my own, I just—”

Clint cuts him off by saying, “Yeah, of course. They’re books, they’re meant to be read. You can also get your own, but feel free to read mine. I’ll move the couple that I’m possessive about to my room, and then you don’t have to worry.”

Bucky nods. “Thank you.”

Clint shrugs. “Mi casa es su casa, and all that.”

“You don’t even speak Spanish.”

“Yeah, yeah, I was horribly failed by the American education system, what can ya do about it?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “So was I, and I still speak seven languages fluently.”

“I can curse in Russian,” Clint offers. “And a little in Hungarian, too.”

“Of course you can,” Bucky says with a sigh. He wants to thank Clint again, keep thanking him until the sincerity gets through his self-deprecation and evasion, but he also knows that would be more for his own sake than for Clint’s. Instead, he says, “I’ll make coffee, you queue up something on TV?”

Clint’s eyes light up. “You got it,” he agrees.

Bucky ignores the way his heart thumps extra hard when Clint’s face lights up like that.

***

A strange side effect of Bucky living with Clint is that he starts spending more time with the tower’s other inhabitants.

It’s not that the others spend much time in Clint’s rooms—if that was the case, Bucky would have been seeing more of them for a couple of months now—but instead it’s that he’s spending more time outside of the apartment. It feels weird hanging out with Steve in what used to be their shared living space, so now they spend time together at the gym, in the tower’s living room and kitchen, and even up on the roof or the balconies now that the weather isn’t terrible. There’s a greenhouse on the roof that Steve particularly enjoys, because now that his nose isn’t constantly stuffy and he doesn’t have asthma and a list of allergies a mile long, he can enjoy the smell of earth and plants and flowers.

But being in communal areas of the tower means that sometimes its other residents are there, too. At first, Bucky finds their presence unsettling, but after a while he gets used to Thor’s ebullient greetings when he enters a room and finds them there, or Tony wandering into the kitchen for coffee because he’s run out in the lab, or Bruce meditating in the greenhouse when they walk in.

After a while, Bucky starts spending time there even without Steve or Clint around. He finds a spot on the couch that he prefers in the communal living room—a “safe space” or whatever—and sometimes finds himself in the kitchen at one of the barstools, or in the dining area in what has been established, despite his relative infrequency in joining the team at meals, as His Chair.

He’s at one of the barstools in the kitchen when Thor walks in one day. He bypasses the coffee pot, which stands out to Bucky because it’s such a sharp difference from Clint or even Kate, who he’s spending more time with these days, but digs in the cupboard instead and comes out with a box of Poptarts.

“Those things are gross,” Bucky comments, trying this interacting with people that aren’t his friends thing.

“They are disgusting,” Thor agrees, his voice pitched a bit lower than normal—because he’s learning to modulate for general comfort, or because he’s modulating specifically in an attempt not to overwhelm Bucky? Either makes Bucky uncomfortable—the guy should just feel free to be himself, especially if he’s trying to change for Bucky’s sake—but he pushes the thoughts away.

“Then why are you eating them?”

Thor shrugs elegantly. It’s truly a skill; the guy is a burly dude and nothing about him should be elegant, and yet it’s the kind of shrug Bucky thinks only he or Romanoff could pull off. “They are disgusting in unique and entertaining ways.”

Bucky considers that. “Okay then,” he says after a few moments of failing to comprehend why anyone would eat something they didn’t like if no one was forcing them to. But, y’know, it’s not really his place to judge anyone for their quirks.

They sit and stand respectively in silence, Thor lounging against the counter as he steadily demolishes the box of sugary breakfast junk. Bucky is comfortable in the silence, more so than he ever is speaking these days, and Thor looks much the same. When Thor finishes the box, he dismantles it meticulously before putting it in the recycling bin next to the trash by the far wall. He sees Bucky watch the movements and explains, “My lady Jane has told me that recycling is of the utmost importance for the preservation of this planet.”

Bucky nods. He tries to think of what to say, and the words don’t come. The moment in which he could have replied naturally passes, and he feels a moment of stress that he’s missed the social cue, but Thor looks unbothered, so he slowly relaxes once more.

Bucky goes to take a sip of his now cold coffee and finds that the mug is empty. He sighs and eyes the pot—he should’ve brought it with him to his seat, but that felt too much like something Clint would do, and he doesn’t want to reach that low—when Thor snags the pot and passes it over.

“Thanks,” Bucky says, filling his mug and passing the pot back. Thor replaces it with a smile.

“You are welcome, friend Barnes.”

Bucky considers the statement as he blows on the too hot coffee. Unlike Clint, his skin will heal quickly if he burns it (but he holds that Clint’s assertion that his own skin can grow back “stronger” is scientifically unlikely), but he’s not in the business of hurting himself for no good reason.

Thor calls him friend. Bucky knows Thor calls all of them friend, though he is actually friends with most people he calls that. Bucky knows Thor is almost as out of place as he is, probably even more out of place than Bucky and Steve are, and he knows from recent experience that making friends is hard. But he also thinks there’s a power in stating it, willing it to be so, and then acting on that until it becomes true.

He thinks about whether he _wants_ to be friends with Thor, and all of his instincts say yes. Thor, for all that he is loud and brash and the life of every party, for all that he’s one of the few people who could probably win in a fight against Bucky, also has the potential to be quiet and solemn and steady—all traits Bucky appreciates in a person.

Friends.

While Bucky has been musing, Thor has been pouring himself a cup of coffee. He drinks it as if it’s water, not to mention like it isn’t hot. Bucky thinks, though, that if anyone’s skin was going to be impervious to scalding coffee or grow back stronger, it would be Thor’s, so he doesn’t comment.

“This drink is also terrible,” Thor complains conversationally.

“Don’t let Tony or Clint hear you say that,” Bucky says with a snort. He’s lucky he’s still blowing on his coffee, not sipping at it, because he thinks snorting lukewarm coffee out of his nose would be unpleasant.

“I am unafraid of their ire,” Thor dismisses.

Bucky snorts again, this one more of an aborted laugh than out of surprise. “I guess it grows on you, you know?”

“Ah,” Thor says, nodding, “much like the Poptarts.”

“I wouldn’t know in that case,” Bucky says. “I mostly picked up coffee from proximity to Clint. He basically inhales it. But I wouldn’t start eating Poptarts for anyone.”

Thor shrugs. “The lady Darcy finds the combination of myself and Poptarts amusing. Who am I to take that joy away from her?”

Bucky nods. He doesn’t know Darcy—he barely knows Jane—but even with the minimal time he’s spent around Thor at team functions, he knows of Darcy. He thinks he might like her in the same way he likes Kate—she felled Thor with a taser, after all, so she can’t be that bad.

The thought of felling Thor brings Bucky to a realization: he could ask Thor to spar with him.

He won’t spar with Steve, can’t bear to fight him, even a pretend fight, even now. Not after everything that happened. He won’t spar with Clint; he trusts Clint’s skills, trusts that he’d be able to hold his own, but he’s also so much more breakable than even Steve, and Bucky’s afraid of what he could do.

He could, in theory, spar with Natasha. She’s trained like him—trained _by_ him?—and could maybe stand her ground. But she’s fragile enough that he could still hurt her, and beyond that, neither of them wants to fight the other: they don’t want to know which of them would win. They both rest easier thinking it’s themself, or the other, depending on the day and their demons.

But Thor. Bucky could spar with Thor. Thor is stronger than even Steve, and he’s had more combat training than even Bucky. Thor is the one person who could probably contain Bucky—shy of the Hulk—and who wouldn’t be injured if he lost control.

Bucky isn’t sure, for all these thoughts, that he’s ready to try fighting again. But regular movement has awakened his body and he _aches_ to use the skills that have become as much a part of him as shooting. With shooting, he was afraid, but he had to try it and own it and reclaim it. Maybe this is the same.

When Bucky looks up from where he’s tracing the rim of his coffee cup and gazing into its depths, lost to his thoughts, Thor is watching him shrewdly. “I have a question,” Bucky says slowly, and with each successive word he commits to putting his thoughts out into the world.

“I will answer to the best of my ability,” Thor promises.

“Would you spar with me?” These words come faster; now that he’s committed to speaking them, he wants them out.

Thor considers him. “Why?”              

Bucky explains, to the best of his ability, the circles his thoughts are going in. His skills, and what they mean to him, the good and the bad; his fears and his hesitance; why Thor, above the others, is the one person he could trust with this.

When Bucky finally falls silent, hoping the tangle of his half-formed thoughts and sentences conveyed what he actually meant, hoping that they’ll be enough, Thor remains quiet, clearly giving the matter the thought it deserves. He isn’t Clint, helping Bucky on an impulse, and he isn’t Steve, hesitant in the face of Bucky’s trauma and the attributes that made him the Winter Soldier; Thor is somewhere in between, measured and fair. Oh, he can be impulsive—they all can, the whole team, in their own ways—but he’s impulsive with himself, not with others. That knowledge steadies Bucky’s nerves; whatever Thor decides, he will have considered everyone’s safety—theirs, but also everyone else’s.

After an indeterminable amount of time, Thor nods. “I would be honored to spar with you.”

Bucky’s face pulls into a grin unbidden. He doesn’t bother to try to contain it. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome, my friend,” Thor replies. “Shall we meet at the gym in a few hours’ time?”

Bucky nods. “Sounds good to me.”

“I will see you then,” Thor promises. He smiles at Bucky once, bright and honest, before leaving the room to do whatever it is Norse gods do in their free time.

Bucky stares into his coffee, excitement building. He doesn’t jump when Clint drops out of one of the air vents—widened by Tony specifically with Clint in mind—into the room. He steals the remainder of Bucky’s coffee, and Bucky allows it easily.

“You think you can take Thor?” Clint asks after a few moments. The coffee is already gone, and he’s slowly leaning his weight against Bucky, like keeping himself upright without his normal amount of caffeination is too much effort.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Are you kidding? Of course not.”

Clint nods. “It’s good to know your limits. Can I watch?”

Bucky hesitates before nodding, his chin brushing against Clint’s hair because Clint’s head has come to rest precariously on the point of Bucky’s shoulder. “Yeah.”

“Awesome,” Clint huffs. “Make me more coffee?”

“What do I get out of it?”

“Anything,” Clint mumbles.

And. Oh. Clint’s weight against Bucky combined with those words has him _wanting._

He shoves Clint off of him, but gently, and moves to the coffee pot. “I’ll take an IOU,” he says, and is proud of himself when his voice remains steady.

“Worth it.” Clint slumps his weight against the counter instead. “You should go borrow sparring clothes from Steve.”

Bucky grimaces. “Do I have to?” He doesn’t particularly want Steve to know; he doesn’t want Steve to protest, or worry, or—worse—be jealous that Bucky didn’t ask him.

“Nothing of mine will fit,” Clint points out. “I guess you could ask Thor.”

Bucky sighs. “Fine,” he relents. “I’ll go find Steve.” He deposits the pot of coffee next to Clint as he goes, and just barely stops himself from following his impulse to drop a kiss on the top of Clint’s head.

He’s so fucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's that noise in the distance? Is it a bird? A train? No, wait, it's... it's... THE END OF FINALS APPROACHING. And what does that mean? Hopefully, HOPEFULLY, more time to write. I am eternally grateful for y'all's endless patience with me and my slow updates and for your beautiful comments that make me want to write all of the time. <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky makes more friends, learns some new things, and comes to a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has it been too long since I updated this? Yes. Do I have any excuses? No. But I have a chapter for you, so: please enjoy. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me and this story.

 

Sparring with Thor is like a revelation. It feels like working out muscles that haven’t been exercised in too long, which is patently untrue, because Bucky exercises plenty. But he’s finally got an excuse to use tactical skills again, to brush up on his hand to hand combat, and it’s like breathing in fresh air after you’ve forgotten how good fresh air can be—the taste, the smell, the purity of the experience.

 

It’s fucking spectacular, and even Steve watching worriedly from the sidelines (next to Clint, who is watching with dark eyes and Bucky can’t read but knows at least aren’t _worried,_ c’mon Steve) can’t put a damper on the way Bucky’s mood has fucking _soared._

Thor wins each match, as predicted, but Bucky makes him work for it. It feels strange to be able to be proud of his skills, while simultaneously taking comfort in the fact that Thor’s his better in this.

 

“Thank you for the exercise,” Thor tells Bucky when they call it a little over an hour later. Bucky could have gone longer, probably, but he’s not in Winter Soldier shape, and there’s no reason to push himself past his limits. “You are a worthy opponent.”

 

Thor is back to booming, apparently settled by the exercise in the same way that Bucky is. It makes Bucky smile at him. “You too,” he says, and he means it.

 

Steve appears at Bucky’s side and presses warm fingers to a spot on Bucky’s cheek from where Thor got in a lucky punch. “Does that hurt? Should we ask Bruce to look at it?”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Steve. I have accelerated healing. I’ll be fine by dinner.”

 

Steve doesn’t look convinced. Clint walks up and slings an arm around Steve’s shoulder—how has Bucky never noticed that Clint is even taller than Steve? And why does _that_ give him uncomfortably zingy feelings? “That was badass,” he tells them all. “Like, Natasha and me level badass, and we know all of each other’s moves.”

 

“I highly doubt that,” Bucky comments. “She’s too smart not to have kept some back.”

 

Clint considers. “She did do that one thing in Budapest when I wasn’t looking that seemed impossible…” he muses. “Okay, whatever, we know most of each other’s moves.”

 

“I’m glad you weren’t bored,” Bucky says, unsure what words to say but testing them out.

 

“Are you kidding? That was beautiful.”

 

Even Steve nods reluctantly. “It was kind of like dancing.”

 

“I was always good at that,” Bucky says, the words slipping out before he even means to say them.

 

But they make Steve smile, soft and nostalgic. “Yeah, you were.”

 

There’s a moment where Bucky doesn’t know what to say, and then Thor claps Bucky on the shoulder firmly enough to almost make him stumble—almost. “You are most welcome to spar with me any time,” Thor declares.

 

Bucky can’t help but grin a little at the thought of regular exercise and a way to burn off the jittery, anxious energy that sometimes overtakes him. “I appreciate that,” Bucky says. “Next time I’ll give you a better fight.” He thinks maybe he could start working out again, now that he’s not afraid of his skills. He hadn’t lost control once, not even when Thor’s punch slipped past his guard and landed hard on his cheek. He doesn’t feel the need to train with any serious intent, but building up his endurance once more could be a worthwhile pastime, like Star Trek and walks with Lucky.

 

“I look forward to it,” Thor agrees, sounding pleased. He moves away toward the benches where they left their things, collecting his phone and checking it. “I must depart,” he announces. “My lady Jane is requesting my presence.”

 

“Tell her hi,” Steve says. Clint nods, and Bucky says nothing, because he doesn’t know Jane, so saying anything would be weird.

 

But he does remember to say goodbye to Thor, so that’s one more person (if not human) he’s successfully interacted with this week. Huh, that’s a thought—does conversing with Thor _technically_ count as human interaction?

 

Thor being an alien is probably what makes him so great. So maybe it doesn’t count.

 

(Bucky’s going to count it anyway.)

 

“What are you doing for the rest of the afternoon?” Steve asks, a small hopeful look on his face.

 

“Uh, showering,” Bucky says. “And then I don’t know?”

 

“Do you want to come over and bake?” Steve looks so tentative and hopeful that Bucky couldn’t bear to say no.

 

“Yeah, Stevie, that sounds nice,” he says. And it really does. “I’ll be down soon.”

 

He bumps Steve’s shoulder with his own before walking away; there’s showers attached to the gym—because of _course_ Stark would have showers attached to his gym—but Bucky prefers not to be vulnerable in communal spaces.

 

Clint follows him out. “You’re like scary good,” Clint comments. His hands are shoved in his pockets, and he looks thoughtful.

 

“Yes,” Bucky agrees. “You knew that.”

 

“I did,” Clint says, “but I didn’t _know_ it know it, you know?”

 

The word “know” has started to lose some meaning in the repetition. “No?”

 

“Like, I knew you were dangerous, but I hadn’t ever seen it for myself.”

 

Bucky has a thought that brings him up short—literally. He halts and asks, voice quiet, “Are you scared of me now?”

 

“What? No, of course not,” Clint says, and he reaches out to put a hand on Bucky’s arm. Bucky is now accustomed to Clint’s casual touches, and it does not unsettle him at all. “I was just thinking out loud. Don’t worry about it.”

 

Bucky hesitates, unsure if he can believe that. But, to his knowledge, Clint has never lied to him, and this falls under the realm of trust. Bucky trusts Clint; so, he must believe that Clint is telling him the truth. “Okay,” he agrees, voice still quiet.

 

“Sorry,” Clint says, face pulling into a grimace. “My mouth gets away from me.”

 

Bucky quirks a small smile. “You think I haven’t already noticed that?”

 

Clint shoves at him, albeit gently. “I’m trying to apologize, you asshole.”

 

“It’s fine.” It is.

 

Still, they don’t say much more, and when they get to their floor, Bucky heads off to his bathroom without a word. He takes his time showering, because he has discovered that while he dislikes being vulnerable, he enjoys the sensation of warm water against his skin. He thinks, not for the first time and probably not for the last, that he is very glad his arm is waterproof.

 

By the time he joins Steve on his floor, he’s relaxed completely. He opens the door with the key he still has, calling out his presence and making his way into the kitchen.

 

“What are we making?” he asks, taking in the way Steve is surrounded by ingredients and studying a tablet computer’s screen.

 

“I thought we could make a cake,” Steve says. “I found some old recipes. I haven’t had any of them in years, and I barely had a chance to try them growing up.”

 

“Okay,” Bucky agrees easily. He would be uncomfortable if Steve was showing him things from the past in an obvious attempt to trigger his memories. He thinks they’ve moved past that, though, and Steve is allowed to want connections to the past for himself. Bucky is glad to share these new moments with him, even if he doesn’t remember the details of the old moments they’re honoring.

 

They bake, and they joke, and it’s easier than it ever was when they lived together and Steve was assessing him all the time.

 

When Bucky leaves a few hours later, he hugs Steve. “You’re my family,” Bucky says, because _I love you_ is too much—even if it’s true—but also he doesn’t think he’s ever acknowledged the bond between them with words. Steve has affirmed this sentiment extensively, but Bucky does not remember doing so unprompted.

 

It costs him, but Steve’s joy is easily worth the unease. “Yeah, Buck,” Steve agrees. And, aw, gee, he sounds choked up.

 

Bucky’s so relieved that he doesn’t have to deal with that. “Night,” he says, and escapes from the emotionally charged moment he created.

 

He breathes a sigh of relief when he makes it to the elevator and can relax.

 

**

 

Bucky finally finds a type of social media he enjoys.

 

It’s not that he didn’t try to enjoy the others. Instagram was fine, but the pressure to take a good picture and choose the right filter made it overall unenjoyable. He does enjoy following many, many accounts that post daily (sometimes even more frequent) pictures of dogs. He even likes their pictures, and sometimes he bookmarks a very particularly cute dog to look at on bad days. Overall, Clint declares him a partial success.

 

He does not understand twitter. He is, apparently, very good at it. He’ll tweet random thoughts and get 500 likes and 247 retweets in less than an hour. But the formatting is all wrong and the posts are not chronological and sometimes he goes to click on one but everything refreshes before he can and the post is lost forever. He gives up on Twitter after three weeks, and Clint declares that a resounding failure.

 

Tumblr is easier, and it is harder. It is like shouting into a void, if the void occasionally acknowledged you and even more occasionally shouted back. Bucky stops trying to use it for anything personal and instead sets up a blog that retweets Avengers content. He thinks of it like gathering intel, and it calms him to know how the public thinks of the team. He downloads an extension and blacklists any mentions of himself.  Clint declares this another partial success, but says that he wants Bucky “to find a way to express himself.” Bucky tells Clint that he sounds like his therapist. Clint smacks Bucky with one of Lucky’s dog beds, purportedly because there is no nearby pillow.

 

But then Clint tells Bucky to download Snapchat on his phone, and Bucky does.

 

Snapchat is completely different. The whole purpose is to take subpar pictures. There is no pressure; all pictures vanish in 10 seconds.

 

At first, Bucky just sends snaps to Clint. Steve doesn’t use snapchat, and Kate’s out of town again, and Bucky could text her and ask for her snap code but he doesn’t know if he likes snapchat enough to commit to it like that, so he doesn’t.

 

He sends pics of the ceiling and captions of what Lucky is thinking at any given moment and of the dartboard when he makes intricate patterns with the darts and it’s… fun. He gets snaps back, blurry photos of him turning to look when he senses the camera aimed at him, more pictures of Lucky that he wishes he could save, snaps of the rest of the team going about their days.

 

He shows Snapchat to Thor, who is way better with a phone than anyone gives him credit for and has a few hundred thousand followers on Twitter, and Thor becomes his second Snapchat friend. Thor sends him gym selfies from unflattering angles where he still looks fucking amazing, and Bucky resolves never to tell Thor that Bucky thinks he’s the second prettiest Avenger.

 

Bucky isn’t expecting it, though, when Nat drops down next to him on the communal sofa one day and says, “Add me on Snapchat.” It’s not really a request.

 

Bucky considers her. “Why?”

 

She tilts her head at him, gaze evaluative. “You send pictures of Lucky with captions. Clint says they’re funny. I want them, too.”

 

Bucky hums thoughtfully. “I could send you pictures of Clint drinking out of the coffee pot, too.”

 

She grimaces. “I’ve seen that already in real time. I don’t need to ever see it again.” She sounds weary and yet also affectionate.

 

It’s that, the affection, that melts Bucky’s last bit of wariness.

 

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees. They trade Snapchats and she leaves him be. He shrugs and turns on Dog Cops—it’s gotten kind of addictive and is very soothing. He’s not upset, but he is a little confused, and something grounding wouldn’t be amiss.

 

Natasha doesn’t snap him for a week—she ends up away on a mission, which is fine. Bucky sends her all of his Thoughts of Lucky snaps in the meantime, with a vague hope that she won’t be annoyed by the sheer number of them and sneak into Clint’s apartment to murder him in his sleep.

 

She does not murder him in his sleep. Instead, she sends back a snap out the plane window of blue sky and clouds. The only text is a laughter-crying emoji.

 

He sends back a picture of the ceiling with _even I know ur not supposed to text on planes._

She sends back her hand, with the middle finger pointing up, and a caption that reads _wifi enabled flights, bite me._

 

It’s the start of a beautiful friendship.

 

They still don’t really get each other in person. He can shut off the part of him that automatically sees her as a threat, and he suspects that she feels the same. But over the phone, sending silly photos with stupid captions to each other, it’s easy to dismiss that feeling.

 

They get to know each other surprisingly well. So maybe it shouldn’t surprise him when he sends her a snap of Clint, asleep on the couch, head tilted back and mouth open as he snores, Lucky sprawled across his lap and then some, and she replies with her own face, eyebrow raised, and the caption _when r u gonna tell him how u feel._

It shouldn’t surprise him, maybe, but it _does,_ and he has to tamp down on the urge to throw his phone across the room.

 

He could deny it—but what’s the point? _Is it obvious,_ he asks, just snapping a photo of his knees for a backdrop to send it off with.

 

 _No_ is he gets back, in the chat feature no less. Then the little bitmoji image of Natasha pops up, with the little ellipsis that indicates she’s typing. _You should tell him._

Bucky swallows. His fingers shake a little as he goes to respond, which is just unacceptable. He takes a deep breath, forces them steady, and types _I don’t know._ He pauses but then hits send.

 

It’s kind of a relief—to know that someone knows. To not deny it.

 

She types for a long time. He’s expecting a long response, but all he gets back is _okay._

 

He doesn’t know how to feel about that. On the one hand, it gives him nothing to go on. But… she didn’t warn him away from Clint. She didn’t encourage him to tell Clint, but she didn’t tell him he wasn’t good enough, or sane enough, or anything like that.

 

 _I’ll tell him soon,_ Bucky sends back.

 

_Not b4 ur ready._

He sends a thumbs up emoji.

 

She sends an okay emoji.

 

He sends a sleeping emoji and throws a blanket over Clint, heading off to sleep.

 

He lays there and stares at the ceiling, trying to imagine telling Clint.

 

He starts with the worst case scenarios. Clint could say he didn’t want to live with Bucky anymore—but then Bucky would just go back to Steve. Not desirable, but not the worst thing that could happen. Clint could want nothing to do with Bucky—but Bucky knows, even as the thought occurs to him, that it wouldn’t happen.

 

Clint was Bucky’s friend when he was barely a functioning person. Clint wouldn’t reject him over something like harboring a crush.

 

Clint could, of course, reject him in a specifically romantic way. It would hurt, but it wouldn’t hurt more than a lot of things Bucky has been through. Maybe it would have set him back a few months ago, but it won’t be as dire now. Not when he has the friendship of Thor and Natasha and Kate as well as Clint and Steve. He’s starting to actually feel like he’s worth something now that multiple people know and like him; he’s nurtured that feeling far too carefully for something like this to ruin it now.

 

He falls asleep before he can think of the positive outcomes, but he’s not optimistic enough to hope for them anyway.

 

But maybe a small part of him is looking forward to no longer keeping this secret, now that it’s partially out, because the last word he thinks as he drifts off is _soon,_ and it fills him with a sense of anticipation that is pleasant rather than anxious.

 

_Soon._

**Author's Note:**

> Final note: I don't have a beta, so feel free to point out any mistakes I missed, and also if anyone is interested in beta-ing, lmk! <3


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